Life of Mademoiselle La Gras (Louise de Marillac), foundress of the Sister of Charity : preceded by letters of Mgr. Mermilod and A. Fiat

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LIFE OF

MADEMOISELLE LE GRAS

(LOUISE DE MARILLAC),

FOUNDRESS OF THE SISTERS OF CHARITY.

PRECEDED BY LETTERS OF MGR. MERMILLOD, BISHOP OF LAUSANNE,
AND OF VERY REV. A. FIAT, SUPERIOR GENERAL OF THE
PRIESTS OF THE MissjUdUP OF THE
SISTERS

Erattslatelr front tfje IFre

NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, AND ST. LOUIS I

B EN ZIGER^> BROTHERS,

PRINTERS TO THE HOJ^WVPOSTOLIC SEE.

HOLY REDEEM Efe&l m&l WINDSOR

Copyright, 1884, by BENZIGER BROTHERS.

TO THE DAUGHTERS OF CHARITY.

This book is not worthy of the name it bears ; but
love for your Mother has inspired it. Receive it
with kindness, recognize in it her whose life you re
produce every day, and grant the Author a remem
brance before God.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Dedication 3

Letter of Mgr. Mermillod, Bishop of Hebron, Vicar- Apostolic of

Geneva 9

Letter of M. Fiat, Superior-General of the Priests of the Mission

and Daughters of Charity 12

Preface 15

CHAPTER I.

15911613.

The Marillac Family Birth of Louise Her Education The
Monastery of Poissy Her Father s House She thinks of join
ing the Capuchius Father Honore de Champigny diverts her
from this project Her Marriage . 19

CHAPTER II.
1613 1623.

Birth of her son Her acquaintance with St. Francis de Sales and
with Mgr. Camus, Bishop of Belley, her director Her Vow
not to remarry Interior trials 34

CHAPTER III.
1623 1625.

St. Vincent de Paul The Marillacs and the Carmelites Sickness
and Death of M. Le Gras 48

CHAPTER IV.

1625 1629.

Louise s change of Residence Her rule of Life The Confra
ternities of Charity The First Servant of the Poor 59

6 Contents.

CHAPTER V.

PAGE

1629 1631.

St. Vincent sends Mile. Le Gras to visit the Confraternities of
the Province Mile. Pollalion Pestilence in France Death of
Marguerite Naseau Maternal Solicitude of Louise.. 79

CHAPTER VI.

16321634.

Fortune and Disgrace of the Uncles of Louise Marshal de
Marillac dies on the Scaffold and the Chancellor in Prison-
Mile. Le Gras does not allow herself to be cast down by
Affliction, but pursues, courageously, the Path of her good
Works She receives at her house the First Daughters of
Charity Her Vow to Consecrate herself with them First
Conference by St. Vincent de Paul 95

CHAPTER VII.

1634 1636.

The Rivals of Louise in Charity Mme. Goussault and the visit
to the Hotel-DieuW\\z. Le Gras removes with her Daughters
to La Chapelle. I2 5

CHAPTER VIII.

1636 1640.

New Works are undertaken at La Chapelle Catechism Ladies
Retreat The Spanish Army in Picardy Mile. Le Gras gives
an Asylum to the Fugitives She sends two of her Daughters
to Richelieu Opening of the Foundling Asylum Death of
Mme. Goussault Voyage to Angers The first Hospital
attended by the Daughters of Charity 150

CHAPTER IX.

1641.

Mile. Le Gras is Established at the Faubourg Saint Denis Her.
interior Life, from her Writings and the Souvenirs of the first
Sisters Interior Combats and Victories Her Humility and
Charity for her Daughters 1 79

Contents. 7

CHAPTER X.

PAGE

1641 1646.

Progress and Constant Development of the Work Origin of the
Title Sister-Servant First Daughters of Charity authorized to
make their Vows M. Portail is named Director Establish
ment of a Council Accidents and Divine Protection 199

CHAPTER XI.

16461648.

St. Vincent and Mile. Le Gras solicit Approbation for the Com
pany The Sisters are asked for in Brittany The Approba
tion granted, but the Articles lost Divisions and Difficulties
at Nantes Changes at the Foundling House Celebrated Pero
ration of St. Vincent de Paul 214

CHAPTER XII.

16491652.

Mile. Le Gras and her Daughters during the Fronde Civil War
and Charity The Sisters in Picardy, Champagne, and in the
Beauce of Paris Death of Mgr. Camus and of Mme. de
Lamoignon Marriage of Michel Le Gras Birth of a Little
Daughter 2 37

CHAPTER XIII.

1652 1655.

The Elect among the Elect Daughters of Charity in Poland-
Hospital of the Name of Jesus Founding of the General Hospi
tal Bossuet preaches there the Panegyric of St. Paul His
Opinion of the Daughters of Charity 261

CHAPTER XIV.

1655-

Approbation given by the Ordinary of Paris to the Company of
the Daughters of Charity Session of the Establishment The
Spirit inspired by Mile. Le Gras Wisdom of her Government. 282

8 Contents.

CHAPTER XV.

PAGE

16571659.

Louis XIV. recognizes the Existence of the Company Develop
ments of the Work in France The Daughters of Charity in
the Army They are asked for in Madagascar Death of Mile.
Pollalion and of Barbara Angiboust 304

CHAPTER XVI.

1659 1660.

Last Sickness of Mile. Le Gras Her Death Her Funeral Her
Tomb 317

CHAPTER XVII.

Conference on the Virtues of Mile. Le Gras Translation of her
Remains What became of them during the Revolution and
afterwards 330

APPENDIX.

Will of Mile. Le Gras General State of the Establishments At
tended or Directed by the Daughters of Charity 35 1

LETTER OF

MGR. MERMILLOD,

Bishop of Hebron and Vicar-Apostolic of Geneva,

To THE AUTHOR.
MONTHOUX (HAUTE-SAVOIE), December 8, 1882.

M

You are publishing the life of Mile. Le Gras, and
memories which connect this holy life with St. Fran
cis de Sales give me a right to thank and congratulate
you.

You have produced a useful and most attractive book.
You have seized a very providential opportunity of plac
ing in relief the humble, great Christian soul whom the
glory of St. Vincent de Paul had almost eclipsed, but
who was nevertheless a docile and faithful co-operator in
his works.

Her vocation was pointed out to her by St. Vincent
while she was still a lady of the world; but she was even
then exposing her life in the service of the plague-strick
en. " Fear not," he said " God our Saviour wishes you to
serve Him in something tending to His glory, and be
sure that He will preserve you for that work." She was
faithful to the designs of God; and the account which
you have given us is not only an admirable biography of
a Saint, but it is a complete history of the religious move-

io Letters to the Author.

ment of that epoch, which serves as a frame for this
living portrait. You have painted her soul, her work,
and her times. You have shrunk from no labor of re
search. Library archives, manuscripts, and the letters
of St. Vincent have been compelled to serve your patient
investigation. In the admirable pages of your book are
found no tricks of artificial rhetoric, but minute details
of most interesting facts, sweet, pious perceptions of
mystic science, united with analogies between the society
of that seventeenth century and the wants, aspirations,
and evils of our own time.

The clergy will certainly be interested in reading a
story which teaches the kind of zeal and evangelical in
dustry necessary for raising souls and grouping them
together in works of devotedness.

The Daughters of Charity, so well named the Family
of Providence, will love to reanimate themselves with the
vivifying memory of her who was their foundress and
their Mother. It would not be surprising if more than
one young girl might owe the lights and courage of her
vocation to the meeting with your book. Above all is it
desirable that the sweet, solid life of Mile. Le Gras
were better known among our Christian women. Alas,
how often I repeat that with many of them, there is a
deplorable compromise between the maxims of the Gospel
and the attractions of society!

How many ladies engage by turns in easy devotions
and elegant frivolities! Ever on the alert for pious ex
citement, they make a contract with God for practices of
devotion; they organize good works, and give to vanity
the greater part of the benefit. What a contrast to the

Letters to the A uthor. 1 1

portrait painted in youi pages! Amid the violent agita
tions of La Fronde, Mile. Le Gras and her Daughters
held their ground, animated with that intelligent faith
and fervent piety which made St. Vincent write: " May
God strengthen you in such a way that it may be said of
you. Mulierem f ortem quis invenietl You understand this
Latin; therefore I shall not explain/

You have given us a substantial work, pithy and charm
ing. It will teach more than one heart, now troubled by
our darkening horizon or overwhelmed by our storms,
how it is that Christians are never discouraged and ever
devoted.

The consoling view of the origin of the Daughters of
Chanty; the life of an elect soul; the story of painful
days when such heroes as St. Francis de Sales, St. Vin
cent de Paul, M. Olier, Cardinal de Berulle, lived
and acted, surrounded by an assemblage of Christians
not less heroic is it not a most edifying spectacle ? How
it forces us to become Saints, to be docile to the designs
of God, to love our Saviour Jesus, to devote ourselves to
our fellow-men, by amassing for their service a treasure
of gay patience and joyous tenderness!

Be kind enough to accept my respects, good wishes,

and blessing.

GASPARU,

Bishop of Hebron, Vicar-Apostolic of Geneva.

12 Letters to the Author.

LETTER OF

THE SUPERIOR-GENERAL

of the Priests of the Mission and of the Daughters of Charity
To THE AUTHOR.

PARIS. December 8, 1882.
M.

You desire from me some words of recommendation,
in offering to the public your important and conscien
tious labor on Louise de Marillac, who, with St. Vincent
de Paul, founded the Daughters of Charity and was their
first Superioress.

Your work recommends itself and, I doubt not, will be
favorably received. I have been struck with the erudi
tion you give proof of in this work, and the happy tact
with which you bring forward the testimony of St.
Vincent de Paul in favor of this Mother of the poor; this
strong woman, this elect soul, ever pure pure in her
youth, in her marriage, in her widowhood; and who
wept so many tears over her slightest faults that she
could scarcely be appeased. I have experienced a true
joy in reading your account of the admirable Conferences
of St. Vincent de Paul with the Daughters of Charity.
Your appreciation of them is a just one; they vividly re
call the Conferences held by the Fathers of the Desert.
Existing circumstances give to the publication of the life
of Louise de Marillac an interest and importance which
are easily felt. It is evident that the work of laicisation
which is now being carried on, calls more than ever for

Letters to the Author. 13

simple faithful souls, especially Christian ladies, who
practise the works of charity while living in the midst of
the world.

Hence, what is better calculated, after the grace of
God, to excite zeal for every good work than the ex
ample of Mile. Le Gras, who merited to be chosen by
God to assist St. Vincent de Paul in the establishment
of the Daughters of Charity, and in the realization of
many of his great and holy enterprises ? In giving us
this work written in your characteristic style you have
aided materially the cause of religion and society, and
you have reason to hope that your labor is not in vain
in the Lord.

I have the honor to remain, in the love of the Lord
Jesus and His Immaculate Mother,

Your very humble and devoted servant,

A. FIAT,

Superior of the Priests of the Mission and
of the Daughters of Charity.

PREFACE.

THE seventeenth century, arrogant and robust, was
a period of revival and reparation, especially during
its first fifty years, and the religious peace re-estab
lished by Henry IV. favored the opening of a great
era for France. Under the protection of a wise, firm
authority, the evils of war were repaired, and the re
form decreed by the Council of Trent affected all
ranks of the Church. The clergy were purified and
encouraged ; seminaries begun ; retreats, preparatory
to Holy Orders, and ecclesiastical conferences, estab
lished ; and whilst the older communities returned to
their first rule and fervor, new religious families
sprung into existence. Souls attracted to penance
took refuge with the Capuchins, while those called
to interior life saw the portals of the Visitation or the
grating of the French Carmelites open before them.
" Souls !" exclaims a distinguished historian of this
great religious movement" Souls ! at this epoch we
see them, we touch them." God plants Saints as He
did stars, and the night is illumined. The Church of
France had never before shone so brightly. St.

1 6 Preface.

Francis de Sales, who belonged to us in feeling and
language before his mountains belonged to France,
St. Jane de Chantal, Csesar du Bus, Claude Ber
nard, Father Honore Champigny, M. de Renty, M.
Bourdoise, Cardinal de Berulle, with his two admir
able daughters, Mme. Acarie and Mother Madeleine
de Saint Joseph, finally M. Olier, not to mention
others, appeared at this time, and, in Paris, met the
most popular of Saints and Apostles, him whose vene
rated name personifies, as it were, the religious and
charitable movement of this period Vincent de Paul.

Mingling in this illustrious company we find a
woman, humble, modest, always wishing to hide her
self, so much that even now after death she seems de
sirous of being Avrapped in obscurity. Yes, brilliant
as was the time in which she lived, in spite of the in
numerable efforts to revive its splendor, all that is
generally known of this woman, whose name in the
world was Louise de Marillac, is that she founded
" The Congregation of Daughters of Chanty," which
is itself, as has been said, " the most beautiful expres
sion ever heard on earth, a sweet communication be
tween God and man." *

But the circumstances connected with her founda
tion, the great virtues she practised in a life of seventy
years, the active part she took in almost all the char
ities of St. Vincent de Paul, are sealed letters to a
generation eager for biographies and curious for his-

* The Abb6 Perreyve.

Preface. \ 7

toric exhumations. To the present time the only
work consecrated to Mile. Le Gras dates 1674. Re-
published with additions in the eighteenth century,
and finally reprinted in 1846, it is now forgotten, justly
so from its brevity and antiquated style. The biog
raphers of St. Vincent de Paul, it is true, could
not pass over in silence his faithful co-operator ; but
those who have said most about her were not always
the most exact. This leaves a blank to be regretted,
almost an injustice. Alas ! we may not hope to re
pair this omission fully ; nevertheless numerous doc
uments preserved from the destruction of St. La-
zare in 1789, and mostly unpublished, permit us to
retrace the grand outline of this venerated figure.

Some letters, most reliable sources of history, ad
dressed to Mile. Le Gras by Mgr. Camus, Bishop of
Belley, her first director, and by the Keeper of Seals,
Michel de Marillac, her uncle, and also a precious
manuscript history of this statesman (himself too lit
tle known), serve as a part of our record of the early
years of her life, and the family circle in which these
years were passed. Among the correspondence of
St. Vincent de Paul, recently published by the
Priests of the Mission, are nearly four hundred letters
of Mile. Le Gras, which give an insight into her
life as mother, widow, and foundress.

Numerous writings, also, of a private nature, such
as prayers, meditations, and rules of conscience, throw
light on her spiritual life ; whilst biographical sketches
of the first Sisters of Charity, written by their com-

1 8 Preface.

panions, retrace the virtues of those who were asso
ciates in her works. Such are the sources of incon
testable value to which we have had recourse.

Persuaded, with Bossuet, that " we can add nothing
to the glory of extraordinary souls whose works
praise them," we have sought only to place facts be
fore the reader, and, without fatiguing him with
opinions and reflections, leave him to draw conclu
sions, which, being his own, must be fruitful of good.

Our only aim is to be true and simple like her the
features of whose life we have attempted to retrace.
The life of Mile. Le Gras is characterized by sweet
sanctity. Nothing terrifying, nothing too austere,
nothing beyond the reach of every one, or that any
one with the grace of God may not imitate.

Nevertheless it takes forcible possession of the soul.
Often, while studying this life, have we been re
minded of the enthusiastic exclamation extorted from
Libianus by the mother of St. John Chrysostom,
" What women are among the Christians !"

Happy shall we be if we can make some soul par
take of our admiration, or raise up some one or more
to imitate Louise de Marillac.

LIFE OF MLLE. LE GRAS.

CHAPTER I.

15911613.

The Marillac Family Birth of Louise Her Education The Monas
tery of Poissy Her Father s House She thinks of joining the
Capuchins Father Honore de Champigny diverts her from this
Project Her Marriage.

N IRRESISTIBLE attraction draws us to
the cradle of men and things. It seems
as if we wish to circumvent the law that
governs their growth or rules their voca
tion. This sentiment increases, moreover, in relation
to predestined souls ; we love to scrutinize the traces
of a divine plan in the circumstances attending, or
even in the generation preceding, their birth. In
this the Holy Scripture itself serves as our model,
carefully acquainting us with the relationship of men
famous in early times, and giving us on two occasions
the genealogy of our Saviour. Hence we may be
permitted to recall briefly, at the beginning of these
pages, the origin of her whose life we undertake to
relate.

The Marillac, or Marlhac,* family, from which

* Lefevre de Lezeau, in his " Histoire de la Vie de Messire Michel

20 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

she sprang on her father s side, came from upper
Auvergne, where fora number of years they had been
held in great veneration. The first of this family of
whom we find trace in history was Bertrand, Lord
of Marillac and Vastrie, who lived in the fourteenth
century. He was descended from a Marillac whose
tombstone (date unknown) was visible as late as the
time of Louis XIV. in the Cathedral of St. Flour.
Bertrand, being taken prisoner in England in 1382,
was obliged to sell for his ransom the lordly mansion
of his ancestors situated near Mauriac;* but his
children and grandchildren continued to live in
Auvergne, as is shown by the tombstones in the
old churches of the country ; for in those ages of faith
everything tended toward the sanctuary, and the
house of God was at the same time the safest de
pository of souvenirs. In the sixteenth century
several members of the Marillac family, leaving their
mountains, travelled abroad. From this time we
find them in the monasteries and cloisters of Paris
and the Isle of France; on the episcopal seats of
Brittany, or in charge of important state affairs.
One of them, Guiltaume, the only one of direct
interest to our narrative, was a soldier on the field
of Moncontour. After the defeat of the Protestant
arms be settled in Paris, and became Director of the

de Marillac," an unpublished work, from which we have borrowed
the following details, says that for sake of euphony the name Marl-
hac became Marillac by a change of orthography.

* Now the chief town of the canton, in the Department of Cantal.

The Mar iliac Family. 2 1

Mint and Superintendent of Finance.* He had eight
children, amongst whom we shall mention those only
whose names find a place in our story : Michel,
known as Chancellor de Marillac ; Valence, wife of
Baron d Attichy, a Florentine nobleman, who came
into France in the train of Marie de Medicis ; Louis,
Marshal of France; and Louis, Lord of Ferrieres,
whose wife was Marguerite Le Camus, and who was
the father of Mile. Le Gras.f " If I notice nobility,"

* Guillaume de Marillac died in 1576, and was interred in Saint
Paul s Church in Paris. He had eleven brothers, almost all distin
guished, either in the army, in literature, or in the Church. Gilbert,
the oldest, shared the fortunes, but not the revolt, of the Constable of
Bourbon, and was, from the testimony of our historians, one of the
best speakers of his time a quality which, with liberality, was said
to have been inherent in the Marillac family. His granddaughter.
Marguerite d Arbousse, Abbess and reformer of Val de-Grace, died
in the odor of sanctity and renowned for miracles. (See her Life, by
Fleury, 1685.) Gabriel, the second brother, was he to whom De Thou
paid this magnificent tribute: " For piety, integrity, and eloquence he
has no equal." He was a man of the old school, and a severe critic
of the manners of his time. Three others come in succession:
Antoine, religious at Thiers; Charles, Archbishop of Vienne, Ambas
sador of the King to Soliman, to Henry VIII., and to Charles V., and
who, in his zeal for clerical and judicial reform, brought about a
reunion of the States-General of Orleans; lastly, Bertrand, who
brought to the siege of Vannes the poor habit and the charity of
St. Francis, with the sublime eloquence and theology of St. Bernard,
and to whom, under God, Brittany owes the blessing of preserva
tion from heresy.

f We attach much importance to historic accuracy in this place, to
avoid the embarrassment of different genealogies in the Marillac
family. One example will illustrate the reliance we can place on
them. Father Anselm, considered a fair authority in such matters,

22 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

wrote St. Jerome after enumerating the ancestors of
St. Paula, " it is not that I attach any importance to
these temporal advantages; but I admire them from
the moment that we rise above them and immolate
them ;" and he adds : " The glory of Paula in my
eyes is, not to have had such things, but to
have trodden them under foot for Jesus Christ."
We can say as much for the humble foundress of
the Daughters of Charity. To all her ancestral titles
she preferred that of " Servant of the Poor," and this
sacrifice is to-day her glory. God blessed it and
made it fruitful ; for, like the rod which legend tells
us was covered with flowers and fruit in the Temple,
Louise de Marillac was more productive than the rest
of the entire tree from which she branched forth.

Born during one of the most troubled periods of our
history, growing up amid the din of those religious
and political conflicts which were one day to break
the fortunes of her family, she passed the greater part
of her life in the very centre of revolution. It was at
that period of excitement which followed the assassi
nation of Henry III. in Paris, and the entrance of
Henry IV. into that city. Paris had just been sub
mitted to a blockade of four months, in which nearly
one seventh of its population perished. Sixteen citi-

gives March 15. 1660, as the date of the death of Louise s father,
aged sixty-eight years which would make 1592 the date of his birth;
but his daughter Rene de Marillac was born in 1588, leaving four
years between the birth of father and daughter! Two things, how
ever, are certain: ist. The names of the father and mother of Louise
(if we take the testimony of a writer of some importance, Gobillon, the

Birth of Loziise. 23

zens had divided the city into as many departments,
in each of which one of their number exercised an
absolute tyranny. At last the disorder was such that
proscription-lists were freely circulated ; on these
were inscribed the names of persons accused of sym
pathy with the King 1 of Navarre, each name followed
by one of the letters P. D. C.* indicating the nature
of the death intended for him. The name of Louis
de Marillac does not appear on the list ; hence we con
clude that he never mingled in the excesses of the
time, but imitated the moderation of his brother Mi
chel, who, in his efforts for peace and general recon
ciliation, would have been satisfied to lay down arms
the moment the king would guarantee sufficient re
ligious liberty. f Be this conjecture true or false, the

priest of St. Laurent, who, fifteen years after her death, and in the
midst of those who had known her, wrote of her birthplace, and where
she had grown up). 2d. Her relationship to the Keeper of Seals and
Marshal de Marillac agrees with the documents we have before us; but
whether her father were brother or cousin to the preceding is not in
our power to determine with any certainty. We shall follow the first
of these opinions, put forth by Moreri, which, if true, explains better
the affectionate relationship of Mile. Le Gras with the two most
illustrious men of her race, admitting that it is not in accordance with
the general certainty of our story. An opinion less probable has
been advanced by some writers who believe Marguerite Le Camus,
mother of Mile. Le Gras, to have been a sister of Mgr. Camus,
Bishop of Belley. We are unable to discover any basis for such a
supposition except the similarity of name.

* rendu Dague Chasse : Hanged Stabbed Shot.

f Michel de Marillac, then counsellor to Parliament, acts an impor
tant part in the history of these times. He opposed the treaty destined
to transfer the crown of France to a Spanish princess, and instigated

24 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

child of blessing and grace at whose biography we
are anxious to arrive, was born in Paris itself, and in
the midst of the surroundings we have described,
Aug. 12, 1591.

The joy of her birth soon gave place to sadness.
Mme. de Marillac died before her little daughter
could recognize her. If the child ever saw the mother,
it was when neither eyes nor heart are capable of
memory. Ordinarily there is something wanting in a
child not brought up on a mother s knee, like plants
without sufficient sunlight ; but in this case the priva
tion seemed providential. Called to great things,
the child was to receive a rugged education, and the
melancholy impressions of her early years were des
tined to make her better understand the love neces
sary for the little motherless beings whom she would
one clay snatch from death.

M. cle Marillac, finding himself solely responsible
for the future of Louise, lavished on her the tenderest
care, and her delicate health required all his atten
tion. " God," she wrote, " taught me early that He
wished me to find Him by the cross; from my birth,
and at every stage of my life, I have never been with

the celebrated decree which promulgated anew the Salic law, one of
the fundamental laws of the kingdom. It was he, also, who, after the
entry of Henry IV. into Paris, called together a party of citizens and
loaned 1200 crowns to the Count de Brissac to secure the service of
the German infantry. When the law was enforced for the expulsion
of the revolutionists, he obliged the King to erase his name from the
list of the banished. (Lefevre de Lezeau : " Histoire de la Vie de
Messire Michel de Marillac.")

The Monastery of Poissy. 25

out occasions of suffering." The father was obliged
to consent to a separation from his daughter. De
sirous of having her taught the principles of Christian
piety at an early age, he confided her to the care of
her aunt, named also Louise de Marillac, a religious
in the monastery of St. Louis at Poissy. What abode
better calculated to elevate and form the mind than
this magnificent abbey ! It was founded by Philip
the Fair, in memory of his ancestors, on the site of
the castle inhabited by a line of queens from Clo
tilda, who joined in the victory of Tolbiac, to Blanche
of Castile, who there gave birth to the saintly King
Louis IX.

This magnificent structure covered a space suffi
cient for a small city. On all sides the riches of art
and ornament proved the liberality of kings and lords
whose daughters had made profession of religion in
this convent. The church, a fine specimen of Gothic
architecture of the fourteenth century, with towering
spire overshadowing the cloister, with its nine fres
coed chapels, was a real relic of art, and the eyes of
the young Louise must have been dazzled when she
entered it for the first time. The principal object of
attention on entering the church was a painting of the
king in robes embroidered in fleur delis; this was
above the gallery and opposite to the high altar,
where, according to tradition, St. Louis, his patron,
first saw the light of day. At the side of this paint
ing was a statue of his queen, Marguerite of Provence,
wearing the crown and robes of French royalty ; here

26 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

were also monuments of their three sons. On all
sides were statues and mausoleums of the most illus
trious of these religious : Marie de Clermont, daugh
ter of Robert of Bourbon, second Prioress, who passed
seventy-eight years in the cloister; Marguerite of
France, daughter of King Jean ; Marie de Bourbon,
sister-in-law of Charles V. ; Marie, daughter of Charles
VII.; Isabelled Artois; and Marie of Brittany, all
of whom preferred the solitude of this cloister to the
splendor of the court.

In this sanctuary Louise was to approach the Holy
Table for the first time. The details of this memo
rable event are wanting; but we may presume that it
took place attended by all the exterior solemnity pe
culiar to so great an act, as religious ceremonies at
Poissy were all conducted with great pomp, and the
effect heightened by the presence of two hundred
Dominicans around an altar on which the piety of
kings had accumulated reliquaries of precious stones
and vases of massive gold sparkling with diamonds.

If this magnificence of worship impressed the young
girl wi.th awe, her memory became richly stored, and
could recall without effort these reminiscences of this
ancient abbey.

National history might be said to be learned by in
stinct in a place inhabited for three centuries almost
exclusively by kings, who left their names by their
peculiarities on the rooms they occupied. Mary Stuart
stayed there ; Francis II. held a chapter of St. Michael
there. In the convent parlor Catherine de Medici

The Monastery of Poissy. 27

convoked that famous assembly of Catholics and Pro
testants known as the Conference of Poissy.

The Bourbons remained faithful to the benevo
lent traditions of Valois, so that Louise might one
day have seen the young prince, afterwards Louis
XIII., leading a young-lady postulant, Mile, de
Frontenac, to the altar to take the veil. Flow little
Louise dreamed that forty years after she would in
voke that royal child in behalf of another institution
of which God alone had then conceived the thought
and prepared the future ! Let us not anticipate, how
ever, but return to our story.

At Poissy ancient and modern literature were suc
cessfully cultivated by the religious, many of whom
became familiar with the works of Homer. We are
not certain whether or not Louise learned the Latin
she knew so well from Sister Odeau, who at that
time translated the sermons of St. Bernard and
dedicated them to the Prioress, Mme. de Gondy.*
She certainly exercised her memory in learning by
heart the charming poetry of Anne de Marquet, the
literary glory of the monastery and considered one
of the most distinguished minds and the best Hellen
ist of her time, who had just departed for the beau
tiful " garden of the skies" which her verses so
charmingly sing,

" Where roses of damask and lilies of white
Fade not, but are ever enchanting the sight."

* Collection of the particulars of Mile. Le Gras last illness. Con
firmed by the letters of St. Vincent. (Arch, de la Mission.)

28 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

In this magnificent monastery, however, there
reigned a spirit which savored too much of the world,
for the austere habits of M. de Marillac, and Louise
was removed from this convent. As she took her de
parture, nothing could have made her suspect her
vocation and destiny. Can one believe that from
the height of paradise the royal patron of France,
whose cradle had overshadowed her early years, fore
saw that peaceful army of virgins who would one
day succeed his knights on the banks of the Orient?
History is full of these providential coincidences
whose meaning is only discovered by time.

M. de Marillac, on the return of his daughter to
Paris, placed her in the hands of a preceptress whom
he charged with the care of finishing her education.
He wished that nothing should be omitted that could
contribute to her mental and physical development.
While bodily exercise was not forgotten, she applied
herself to the cultivation of the arts ; above all, paint
ing, for which she had a decided taste, and which
she never entirely abandoned. Discovering in her,
besides this, a remarkable aptitude for abstract truths,
he wished her to pursue the study of philosophy. By
this means, as her first biographer tells us,* she
gained access to the highest sciences, and reading,
pen in hand, soon became one of her favorite occupa
tions. Her conversational powers were so charming
that her father soon knew no greater pleasure than

* " La Vie de Mademoiselle Le Gras, fondatrice et premiere Su-
perieurede la Compagnie des Filles de laCharite,Servantes des pauvres

Her Education. 29

to converse with her, or read the result of her reflec
tions ; and he averred, when writing his will, that his
daughter had been his greatest consolation in this
world, and a sweet rest which God had given him in
the afflictions of this life.

This rugged cultivation prepared the ground of
her soul for great fruits of virtue, which soon
began to bud forth. M. de Marillac, a provident
and intelligent father, had sought to develop in his
daughter a taste for solid matter, only that she might
be far removed from frivolity, and might understand
something of a serious, holy life.

At the age of fifteen or sixteen, Louise had given
herself to the practice of prayer,* and was not slow
to conceive a contempt for the world and an ardent
desire to consecrate herself to God. This thought
occupied her mind a long time before she could de
termine to what Order she was called. It is not sur
prising that she never thought of the abbey at
Poissy, where fervor had cooled and the rule was no
longer in vigor; but it is a little astonishing that
neither was she attracted by a great religious Order
recently brought from Spain to Paris, which was
creating a sensation by the practice of incomparable
virtue.

The interest in this new convent was nowhere more

malades," by M. Gobillon, Priest and Doctor of the Sorbonne, Cure
of St. Laurent. Paris : Andre Pralard. 1676.

* Letter of Mathurine Guerin, Daughter of Charity, to Marguerite
Ch6tif, on the virtues of Mile. Le Gras. (Arch, de la Mission.)

3O Life of Mile. Le Gras.

lively than in the Marillac family ; and Louise was
not ignorant of the active part one of her uncles had
taken in the establishment of this new convent of
Carmelites, or Carmelines as they were called, nor
the secret of the truly extraordinary way in which
he had been led into the work. Towards the close
of the summer of 1602, M. Michel de Marillac, hav
ing found by chance, in one of the bookstores, a
copy of the " Life and Miracles of B. Mother Teresa,"
he bought it and took it with him on a pilgrimage to
Notre Dame de Liesse. Scarcely had he commenced
to read, when, seized with admiration at her fervent
reform of the Carmelites in Spain, he heard an in
terior voice intimating that he should introduce the
Order into France. So many difficulties arose in his
mind in this connection that at first he resisted the
impression; but, conquered by a superior Will, he
at length yielded and became, as Mme. Acarie had
predicted, " the foundation-stone of the French Car
melites."

He it was who prepared and watched over the build-
ing of the beautiful convent in Rue Saint-Jacques.
" A beautiful dwelling," said Mile, de Montpensier,
" where a numerous community is composed of
women of rank and intelligence, who had left a
world they knew only to despise ; there, consequently,
will you find true religious." Nevertheless, and in
spite of all that might attract Louise to Carmel, even
the ties of kindred between her and Mother Made
leine de Saint Joseph, the greatest and perhaps the

She Thinks of Joining the Capuchins. 3 1

most holy of that admirable company, the idea of
clothing herself as a daughter of Saint Teresa never
entered her mind. God would not permit it, having
other designs for her; neither would He permit her
to follow very long another project which attracted
her some time later.

A short time after the Carmelites were estab
lished in France, Paris was enriched by another
Order of women, devoted no less than the Car
melites to prayer and penance. One day, in
July 1606, the Parisians were astonished to see a
procession of twelve religious women, with thorn-
crowned heads and naked feet, each accompanied by a
lady of rank, wending their way, preceded by twenty-
four Capuchins and followed by the Cardinal Gondy,
from the hotel Vendome, where they had rested, to
the convent in Rue Saint-Honore, newly erected by
the liberality of the Duchess of Mercceur. These
religious, who were Capuchins, were known as
Daughters of the Passion, and it was said that no com
munity surpassed them in austerities. Their life
seemed to respond so well to her aspirations that
Louise at first thought of joining them ; and if we
remember what she wrote at a later period concern
ing a first vow, we may suppose that she had made
some sort of promise in the depth of her heart, a
promise very soon annulled by the decision of an
authority without appeal. Not among the Capu
chins, any more than among the Carmelites, had God
placed her vocation, and the person chosen to divert

32 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

her from that design was one of whom a holy bishop
wrote : " We have no miracles to prove a sanctity
greater or more apparent than his." This was Father
Honore de Champigny, at that time provincial
of the Capuchins in Paris.* Over twenty years in
charge of the most important business of his Order,
and in the exact performance of his rule, he won re
spect and confidence by his sweet, humble virtue,
and Mile, de Marillac had no difficulty in opening
her heart to him.

Father Honore, in whom prudence had always
been a distinguishing virtue, saw at a glance that her
health was entirely too delicate for the attempt. He
judged it proper to give her the advice he had
already given to several young girls: " If we gather
the flowers too soon, we hinder the fruit from grow
ing ; but when they fade and fall of themselves, the
fruit is abundant." And, foreseeing the future by the
light often vouchsafed him for the good of souls, he
told Louise that God had other designs in store for her.f

At this time Louise lost her father. Necessita
ted by circumstances to come to some decision
with regard to her life, and interpreting the advice

* The monastery of the Capuchins was opposite the convent at the
junction of the Rue de Rivoli, Rue Castiglione, and Rue du Mont-
Thabor. At this time they had a number of celebrated men, amongst
them a cousin of Mile. Le Gras, Brother Michel, who died in the
odor of sanctity 1631.

f " Histoire de la Vie, Mort, et Miracles du Rev. Pere Honore Bo-
chart de Champigny," by Henry de Calais. The process of his beati
fication was begun in 1635 and has been taken up again recently.

Her Marriage. 33

she had received, she accepted the hand of a young
Secretary of State under Marie de Medicis, Antoine
Le Gras, whose family, like the Marillacs, was origi
nally from Auvergne.* The charity of the Le Gras
was traditional and extended to the town of Puy,
where they had founded an hospital. All this had
some weight in the eyes of Mile, de Marillac, herself
so kind to the poor, who saw in this quality of her
new family a pledge of what she would be permitted
to do in her turn. The marriage was celebrated in
the church of Saint-Gervais,f Feb. 5, 1613. Louise
was then twenty-one years and some months old.

By a singular coincidence, on that very day, and
in the same place, there was baptized a child, called
by his parents Rene Almeras,^: who, half a century
later, became first Superior-General of the Daughters
of Charity, after Vincent de Paul, and directed the
work whose foundress was at this time hidden from
the eyes of all.

* Antoine Le Gras was born at Montferrand, where is still to be seen
the house that once was his.

f The register of the parish of Saint- Gervais, where mention was
made of the marriage of " M. Antoine LeGraset de demoiselle Loyse
de Marillac," appears to have been burnt during the Commune of
1871. (Jal. author of " Dictionnaire Critique de Biographic et d His-
toire".)

\ Rene Almeras, born in Paris, parish of Saint-Gervais, Feb. 5, 1613,
was received into the Congregation of the Mission Dec. 24, 1637, and
succeeded Saint Vincent de Paul as Superior-General Jan. 17, 1661.

34 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

CHAPTER II.

1613 1623.

Birth of her Son Her Acquaintance with St. Francis de Sales and
with Mgr. Camus, Bishop of Belley, her Director Her Vow not
to Remarry Interior Trials.

JHE FAMILY into which Louise had just en
tered did not belong to the nobility. The
Le Gras had never attained to anything
higher than a good and honorable middle
class. Antoine and Nicolas his brother, despite
their straitened circumstances, owed the positions
they occupied to their own exertions and to many
pecuniary sacrifices. One of them, we have said, was
Secretary to Marie de Medicis, the other Treasurer
of France.* Antoine s title of Esquire did not per
mit the wife who bore his name to be styled Madame,
and Louise continued, therefore, to receive no other
title than that of Mademoiselle. Although this usage
was changed in the eighteenth century, the custom
continues in the family of St. Vincent de Paul, and
the Daughters of Charity still say Mademoiselle when

*The title Treasurer of France is given to Nicolas on the parish
register of Saint-Gervais, where his marriage with Madeleine Le Roux
was celebrated Jan. 22, 1613. After his brother s death he purchased
for 5000 livres the position of Secretary of State from the Queen
Mother, and exercised the same under Anne of Austria. He died
Aug. 12, 1646.

Birth of her Son, 35

speaking of their foundress ; nor would we deem it
right to destroy the tradition by modifying an appel
lation consecrated by the respect of almost three
centuries.

Unfortunately there remain but few details of the
new life. opened to Louise. The pillage of St. Lazare,
in which were destroyed numerous letters and docu
ments belonging to the Mission, deprives us of much
information which cannot now be supplied. We know
that she attached herself to her husband with an af
fection proportioned to the esteem he merited by his
God-fearing, irreproachable life.* Her efforts to in
spire her son with grateful remembrance of his father,
and her fidelity in celebrating the anniversary of her
marriage by a Mass and Holy Communion, are lights
which reveal the sweetness of their union.f

The blessing of God was not long delayed, and on
Oct. 19, 1613, she gave birth to a son, who was bap
tized in the church of St. Merry, receiving the name
of Michel Antoine, and having for godfather Rene
de Marillac, member of the Privy Council, and for
godmother Valence de Marillac, wife ^of M. d At-
tichy, Comptroller of Finance^: under the king and
his mother the queen.

Separated from the life and maxims of the world,
far from the court she seems to have altogether aban
doned at this time, the young mother passed her days
in the serious discharge of her duties. The educa-

* Will of Mile. Le Gras. \ See will, and letters of St. Vincent de Paul.
\ Jal. quoted in this work. Gobillon, p. 12.

36 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

tion of her son, the care of servants, whom she led to
the very threshold of perfection for two of them
left her to enter religion, one with the Minims, the
other with the Benedictines, the superintendence
of her affairs and at times those of her husband,
who was the guardian of the five orphan children of
Mme. d Attichy * all these occupied her by turns,
without interrupting the union of her soul with God.
Free to lollow her attraction for the poor, she fre
quently visited them. Neither bad roads nor incle
ment weather hindered her. A woman in her ser-
vicef relates that she would tear herself from the
company of M. Le Gras, and through rain and frost,
often shivering with cold, would climb the mountains
to comfort an unfortunate, or carry biscuits, sweet
meats, and other delicacies to the sick.

The same witness of her daily life testifies that she
washed the sick, combed them, and buried the dead.
Moreover, she often fasted at table while pretending

* Letters from M. de Marillac to Mile. Le Gras dated Sept. 12,
1619, tell us that she accompanied her husband to Attichy, and la
bored with zeal in the administration of this estate. She herself wrote
to St. Vincent, " My late husband spent his time and life in the busi
ness of the house of Attichy." Of the five children whose interests
were confided to them, one followed the profession of arms, and was
killed in 1636; another became a Jesuit: and a third died Bishop of
Autun. The two daughters were Anne, maid of honor to Marie de
Medicis, who became later on the beautiful Countess de Maure, cele
brated by M. Cousin; and Genevieve, who married the Duke of Atri.

f Madame Delacour. The document containing these details is
preserved by the Daughters of Charity.

A Visit from St. Francis de Sales. 37

to eat, and at night, as soon as M. Le Gras was
asleep, she arose and spent the night in her oratory.
Was not this the life of a saint ?

In 1618-19 she was living in the parish of St. Sau
veur,* Rue Cours-au-Villain,f in an old house which
had to be repaired, and a new story added with a
tower, the expense amounting to 18,000 livres, as is
shown by letters from the architect employed. Every
thing tends to prove that it was here she received the
visit of St. Francis de Sales, who passed eight
months in Paris,:): when he accompanied the Cardinal
of Savoy on a mission relative to the marriage of
Prince Victor Amedee, of Piedmont, to Christine, sis
ter of Louis XIII. Mile. Le Gras made his acquaint
ance with all the more pleasure, as on a preceding
journey the holy prelate had met M. Michel de
Marillac at Mme. Acarie s house in Marais, to which
place he walked every day from the upper end of
Rue St. Jacques. When he visited Mile. Le Gras he
was stopping in Rue de Tournon, in an old castle be
longing to the Marshal of Ancre. From this place,
then the palace of the plenipotentiary, he came, fol-

*The church of St. Sauveur was situated at the corner of Rue St.
Sauveur and Rue St. Denis. In 1787 it threatened to fall, and was
demolished, and on this spot was built the house known as 277 Rue
St. Denis. (" Histoire de la Ville et du Dio.cese de Paris".)

f Rue Cours-au-Villain, or Courteau-Villain as it is sometimes
written, is part of Rue Montmorency, and extends from Rue Beau-
bourg to Rue du Temple.

JFrom Nov. 1618 to Sept. 15, 1619.

Letter of St. Francis de Sales to M. de Marillac, April 24, 1621.

38 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

lowing his attraction for great souls, to visit Mile. Le
Gras, who was confined to her house by indisposi
tion. She never forgot his kindness on this occa
sion, nor his advice, which she afterwards made use
of in the direction of her Daughters. The penances
prescribed by " our blessed Father," \ as she usually
called him, the books he composed, were, for her, so
many rules which she gladly followed ; and confident
of his intercession, she believed in its effect in one of
the most critical moments of her life (as we shall pres
ently relate).

Her acquaintance with St. Francis was not of long
duration, however, for in September 1619 the Saint re
turned to his mountains, after having preached every
day, sometimes oftener, in Paris, whose religious
spirit very much affected him. " Piety has made admi
rable progress in Paris," he wrote, " die t un stupor e"*

When he left Paris Mile. Le Gras was under the
direction of one whom the Saint called his only son,
his apprentice, and his chef-d oeuvre^ because the only
person consecrated by him. This was Mgr. Camus,
Bishop of Belley. When and how Louise placed
herself under his direction does not appear. We
know from Mgr. Camus himself that several years
before this time he had been invited regularly to
preach the Advent and Lenten sermons in Paris.f

* Letter of Abbe de Vaux, Jan. 3, 1642.

f Ho trovato Parigi con tanto accresdmentc di divozione che % un stupore.
Nov. 9, 1618. (Migne, vol. vi p. 767.)
\ Probably from 1614 to 1623.

Her Acquaintance with Mgr. Camus. 39

" Not from choice or my own seeking-," he adds, " but
by the interposition of my parents, who, not being
able to see me or induce me to leave my residence,
took this means to bring me to Paris."* He owed
these invitations no less, we may believe, to his pow
ers of oratory; for although his style was somewhat
diffuse and full of metaphor, yet its richness and his
eloquence were much relished at that time.

Louise might have heard him in the church of
Saint-Severin, or Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, or
in the Augustinian Chapel,f or the Oratory ,J where
he preached Conferences for four winters. If she was
charmed by his eloquence, she was no less attracted
by his fervent piety and boundless charity, virtues
assiduously cultivated by St. Francis in this his dis
ciple, in whom he endeavored to excite a maternal
tenderness for the flock confided to his care. We
venture to affirm that not one amongst these souls
corresponded better to his zeal than Mile. Le Gras.||

The mild, firm direction given her by the Bishop of
Belley is recognized at once by the spiritual aliment he

* " Notice sur Mgr. Camus," by Mgr. Depery, Bishop of Gap.

f The convent of the Augustinians was situated opposite Pont Neuf,
where is now held the " Vallee " market.

\ The Oratory, founded Nov. n, 1611, by M. de Berulle, was then
on Rue St. Thomas du Louvre, quite near the hotel of Rambouillet.

" Esprit de Saint Frangois de Sales," by Mgr. Camus.

I Another penitent of Mgr. Camus, little known at this time, was
Claude Bernard, called the poor priest, who owed his conversion to
the Bishop; he gave his property to the poor, and spent his life at
tending the sick and the prisoners. He died 1641.

40 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

recommended, and by the books he proposed to
nourish her persevering taste for prayer: all these
are of the highest order. After the " Imitation of
Christ," which M. de Marillac had just popularized
by a new translation,* the works of Louis of Gre
nada, the " Spiritual Combat," which St. Francis de
Sales carried about him for eight years, " Philothea,"f
and the " Treatise on the Love of God," by the
Bishop of Geneva, then published only a few years.
To these books, which were, as Mme. de Maintenon
said, " sufficient for a lifetime," the study of the Bible
was added, for Louise had been reading with her
husband a translation by the Doctors of the Louvain,
as we learn by a note from her to the Bishop of Bel-
ley.:): Retreats with the Capuchins of the Rue Saint-
Honore at different times during the year, such as the
Carnival, etc., completed the exercises of her interior
life.

After passing some days at the Chartreuse, Mgr.
Camus could not refrain from writing to his spirit
ual daughter : " I am charmed with the solitude and
sweetness of a retreat." It was easy to inspire her
with the same sentiments, or rather it was necessary
to moderate her zeal for these exercises, useful and
salutary though they might be. " You must take

* This translation appeared anonymously in 1621. It has since
gone through fifty editions.

f It is said that the " Introduction to a Devout Life " appeared un
der this name 1606; " The Treatise of the Love of God," 1616.

\ Dated Paris, May 8, 1623. (Arch, de la Mission.)

July 26, 16. .. (Arch, de la Mission.)

Pier Acquaintance with Mgr. Camus. 41

them like honey," he wrote, " rarely and in small
quantities, for you have a certain spiritual avidity
which must be restrained."

Her fervor needed to be moderated likewise in the
practice of penance, a virtue which she did not be
lieve to be a legacy exclusively for convents, although
such is the general opinion of the world. To enliven
her devotion* St. Francis de Sales had recommended
the discipline. Her dress was simple and modest, un
derneath which she wore hair-cloth, and in spite of
her delicate health conquered, by fasts and watching,
the warmth of a nature already subdued by suffering
and the labor inseparable from her duties. New
calls to greater sacrifices were always the answer of
God to these efforts to attain the highest paths of
perfection. Humility, obedience, poverty, and charity
always appeared to her in their ideal beauty, and " to
honor Jesus Christ," as she wrote later, she always
took the resolution inspired by His love.

But that filial confidence which, delighting the
heart, fills it with holy peace, was the constant theme
of Mgr. Camus to his penitent. Her exquisite deli
cacy of conscience, her extreme fear of sin making
her see evil in things indifferent, her dread of having
to reproach herself with past confessions badly made,
sometimes clouded her otherwise clear, strong mind.

" You always make a general confession when
jubilee comes," wrote Mgr. Camus ; " how often have
I told you the effect of these general confessions on

* Letter of Mile. Le Gras, Jan. 3, 1642.

42 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

your poor heart. Ah, no; the jubilee is not sent for
that, but to make us rejoice in God our Saviour ; to
make us say, Jubilemus Deo in salutari nostro" * In
another letter he writes, " I still await the return of
your serenity after those clouds which hinder you
from seeing in full brilliancy the beauty of serving
God. Do not make so many difficulties of indifferent
things. Turn your eyes from yourself to fix them
on Jesus Christ. This is, according to my judgment,
your perfection, and I may add with the Apostle,
In this I have the spirit of God. "

The Bishop of Belley was not the only one to re
proach her with this fault of reflecting too much on
herself a reproach she afterwards made use of for
the preservation of her Daughters.f M. de Marillac,
her uncle, well acquainted with her spiritual tenden
cies, often warned her of her danger. After many
disquieting and long-continued efforts to know her
self as every Christian should, Louise was constrained
to limit her reflections to her miseries, and thus in
crease her humility. " Good and useful thoughts,"
her uncle would say to her, " but not always in sea
son. To acquire virtue it is necessary for us to pro
fit by the means which God gives us ; that is, to rise
by means of our faults above the disposition which
produced them, to humble ourselves before those in
whom we perceive any good, and, this done, to be
lieve ourselves wanting in the knowledge of our-

* Letter of Mgr. Camus, Jan. 20. (Arch, de la Mission.)
f Letter of Sr. Mathurine Guerin to Sr. Marguerite Chetif.

Her Vow not to Remarry. 43

selves, but not to be troubled on that account, and
to ask this knowledge from God." *

This was only the beginning of her interior trials.
After this anxiety on the subject of her sins, which
God permitted to trouble her many years.f Louise
was violently agitated by scruples of another kind. We
find the subject of this illusion in a private paper found
among her effects, where she mentions the promise
to herself already spoken of, and to which her ex
treme delicacy of conscience lent the appearance of a
vow. This evidently refers to the time when she
wished to embrace a religious life among the Capu
chins. Notwithstanding all that her reason could
suggest to reassure her, she constantly asked herself
if she had not failed in her promise to God ; there
fore to calm her fears and follow her attraction she
made a vow not to remarry should her husband
(then in delicate health) die before her. This was on
the Feast of St. Monica, May 4, 1623.

This sacrifice was made with all the generosity pe
culiar to the ardent soul of Louise. She had a right
to hope for peace, but found it not. Strange specta
cle ! but one we can understand when we remember
what tempests the saints have all withstood, or medi
tate in the light of faith on the incessant efforts made
by the Spirit of Darkness to dispute with God the
possession of those very souls whose lives are purest
and most faithful in virtue.

This complete offering of herself, faithful and

* Letter, Aug 12, 1621 (Arch, de la Mission.) f Gobillon, p. 16.

44 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

prompt answer to the call of Him who wished her
entire being, marked a decided step in the interior
life of Mile. Le Gras. It was like the first light of
the aurora. Need we wonder if the Devil now sub
jected her to an assault more terrible still than those
by which she had heretofore been tormented ? On
Ascension Day,* three weeks after her vow, "she fell
anew," she tells us, " into great depression of mind."
Her spiritual horizon was at once in great obscurity,
and the pangs of anguish which combated without
excluding one another gave her soul such torment as
she had never before experienced. At first she asked
herself (and this was the real subject of the tempta
tion) if she ought to remain with her husband, or if she
were not obliged from that moment to leave him, in
order to repair her former vow and be more at liberty
to serve God. At the very time she believed her
self bound to complete this holocaust another sacri
fice appeared to her not less necessary.

The Bishop of Belley, to whom she could submit
her doubts, inspired her with unlimited confidence;
but was she not obliged, by reason of her attachment
to him, to choose another confessor? Deprived of his
direction, separated from her husband and son, what
a solitude life would be to her ! Could she, at least,
rest on God, and in His divine tenderness find a com
pensation for her sacrifices ? No. Her abandonment
should be complete. Doubts against faith assailed
her mind ; the immortality of the soul, even the exist-

*May 25, 1623.

Interior Trials. 45

ance of the Creator, appeared to her enveloped in
thick darkness; and this terrible question presented
itself: "If there be no eternity, no divinity, what
remains for me ?"

These storms, it seems, should have produced a calm.
If Louise had made a vow and was obliged to accom
plish it, surely God willed it. But temptation tar
nishes with its breath the mirror of reason. The soul,
though faultless, which is subjected to the scorching
influence of temptation loses for a time the brilliancy
of her faculties; her power to memorize, clearness
in deduction, good sense to draw conclusions all
is gone : during temptation logic is annihilated.

" For ten days," writes Mile. Le Gras, " these three
uncertainties held my soul in such agony as seemed
to me worse than could be imagined." She knew not
in whom to confide her troubles. The Bishop of
Geneva was the only one who could relieve her,
she said, had he been there. She had thought of
consulting him on the subject of her vow, but he was
dead * before she had an opportunity to do so.

At last God had pity on her. " The day of Pente
cost," f she said (and on this solemn subject we can
do no better than let her speak herself), " being in
Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs at the holy Mass, in an in
stant my mind was cleared my doubts vanished. I
was taught that I should remain with my husband ;
that a day would come when I could make the vows
of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and that I would

* December 28, 1622. f June 4, 1623.

46 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

be with persons some of whom would make the
same vows. I understood that it was to be a place
in which I could assist my fellow-beings ; but I could
not understand how it was to be accomplished, as it
appeared to me all coming and going" evidently no
cloister ; and by this we can understand what the
new work was which should be confided to her. " I
was, moreover, assured that I would be in peace
concerning my director; that God would give me
one whom I should see presently. I felt a great
repugnance to this change ; but I acquiesced, and it
seemed as if the change were deferred for the pres
ent. My third trial was removed by the conviction
that it was God who was teaching me the above, and
being in God I ought not to doubt of the rest." She
thus concludes: "I always believe that this grace
was granted me through the Bishop of Geneva. I
had proof of this at the time which I cannot now call
to mind."

We must remark here a singular coincidence which
seems to have escaped Louise. The holy prelate of
whom she has just spoken, and for whom she had
such devotion, had, unknown to her, passed through
a siege of temptation similar to her own. Like her,
also, he was a prey to the attack of the enemy, after
having made a vow of perfect chastity until death,
and like her, again, peace returned to his soul
while praying in a church in Paris.* Every trial is

* At Saint-Etienne-des-Gres, before a statue of our Lady of Good

Interior Trials. 47

providential ; St. Francis drew from this one a sin
cere and tender pity for tempted souls, to whom he
often addressed these consoling words : "Alas! it is
a strange torment ; my own soul, which endured
similar suffering for six long weeks, can well compas
sionate those who are thus afflicted." He also ac
quired " a certain tact in the government of his spiri
tual warfare," to speak in the language of his biog
rapher, the Bishop of Belley, who styles him " an
arsenal for others, furnishing shields and arms to
those whose temptations were made known to
him." * May we not believe that, taking pity on
the sufferings whose bitterness he had tasted, he
answered from high heaven the call of Louise ?

As to the humble woman, we could not recount all
the fruits she gathered from the thorns and brambles
with which her road seemed at one time to be entan
gled. It was like a second baptism, from which her
soul emerged purer, stronger, more grateful. She
had foreseen her work and the graces that would
enable her to accomplish it ; the one who was to be
her guide was shown her; the entire plan of her life,
her itinerary, so to speak, was opened before her.
Called to form souls, she was, like St. Francis de
Sales, to imbibe from the memory of that interior
agony compassion for their misery and experience
of their tribulations.

Help, still venerated in the chapel of Hospitallers of Saint-Thomas-
de Villeneuve, Rue de Sevres.

* " Spirit of Saint Francis de Sales," part iv. sec, 15.

48 .Life of Mile. Lc Gras.

CHAPTER III.

16231625.

St. Vincent de Paul The Family of Marillac and the Carmelites
Sickness and Death of M. Le Gras.

JOR almost ten years Mgr. Camus came
ever} 7 winter, as we have said, to preach
in Paris. In 1623, about the Feast of All
Saints, he was preparing to go as usual,
when an unforeseen circumstance compelled him to
remain in his diocese. We can easily imagine the emo
tion his absence caused in Mile. Le Gras, accustomed
as she had been to find in him a support and guide
amid the fears and aspirations of her soul. Hence he
wished to prepare her for it from October. " This
miserable father who writes to you will not visit
Paris this winter," he wrote her; and as if to
strengthen her for the trial he added : " O Jesus, Soul
of our souls ! preserve my dear daughter to me ; . . .
shed Thy consolations on her soul; bless her with
Thy sweet hand, herself, her husband, her child, and
her house."* This separation was not to end the
spiritual relations between Louise and her guide;
but letters were sometimes six weeks going from
Paris to Belley,f and the definite resignation which
the prelate now made of the two principal pulpits:]:

* Letter of Mgr. Camus, Oct. 23, 1623. (Arch, de la Mission.)
f Ibid., Jan. 20. % Ibid., Oct. 23.

St. Vincent de Paid. 49

of the capital deprived Mile. Le Gras of all hope of
seeing him soon. She was therefore resigned to
accept from him another director whom Providence
had brought quite near.

She had often met in the neighborhood of her
dwelling, or at the church of Saint Sauvcur, their
parish," a priest, affable, grave, and simple at first
sight, who was known as M. Vincent. This priest,
this saint, was to exercise too great an influence over
her destiny for us to neglect a rapid glance at the
good he had already accomplished.

No life for the last two centuries, perhaps, has
been oftener written than that of St. Vincent de Paul.
Hence it is almost superfluous to say that he was born
April 24, 1576, in the midst of religious wars, at Pouy,
near Dax, of a family of the working class. From this
humble origin, which he took pleasure in recalling to
Mile. Le Gras, he imbibed that tender love for the poor
which he manifested from his earliest years ! Having
like David left his father s flock to receive the holy
unction, Vincent suddenly found himself, by an un
toward circumstance, cast on a barbarous shore and
made a slave. To this very shore his sons were to
carry the Cross and the liberty of the Gospel ; and the
first fruit of his own labors was the conversion of his
master, a renegade from Nice, whom Vincent brought
to Rome and to the convent of Fate bene, Fratelli.
He returned to France on a secret mission for

* The Hotel de Gondy, where St. Vincent lived at that time, was
in the Rue Pavee

50 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Henry IV., and became chaplain to Queen Margue
rite, and afterwards pastor in the little village of
Clichy. Cardinal Berulle, his friend, then appointed
him tutor to the children of M. de Gondy, General
of the Galleys.* This modest position furnished him
with opportunities for the exercise of his zeal among
the numerous servants and followers of the family;
and by placing him in Paris a great part of the year,
permitted him to continue his charge as Superior of
the Visitation Monastery, confided to his care by St.
Francis de Sales.

This preference for a priest still young over many
eminent men then in the ranks of the Sorbonne and
college of Navarre, made by a prelate whose advice
was known to be, " Choose as director one in ten
thousand, "f and who possessed the gift of discern
ment of souls in an eminent degree, this preference,
we repeat, strengthened the advice of Mgr. Camus,
and Louise hesitated not to place Herself under the
direction of Vincent de Paul. Vincent, already occu
pied by outside works, would not willingly burden
himself with the care and direction of souls ; but he
could not refuse Mile. Le Gras when she came to
him from the Bishop of Belley. This was probably <
in the beginning of the year 16254

* Philippe-Emmanuel Gondy, Count of Joigny, Baron of Ville-
preux and Montmirail, brother of Henry de Gondy, Bishop of Paris,
and of Jean-Frangois de Gondy, first Archbishop of Paris, was father
of Cardinal de Retz.

f " Introduction to a Devout Life," part i. chap. iv.

$ Maynard in his " Histoire de Saint Vincent de Paul" savs that

6V. Vincent de Paul. 5 1

She was not slow to appreciate the merits of her
new guide, and soon recognized that it was he whom
God had shown her two years before. Everything in
him inspired confidence. In exterior appearance he
did not seem intended for brilliant affairs ; but whilst
the most humble of men, he excelled in wisdom, good
common-sense, and prudence. The number or the
difficulty of affairs never seemed to trouble him ; he
undertook them in order and carried them through
with patience and tranquillity. Fear of interfering
with the designs of Providence made him slow to
give his opinion, and he decided nothing without
balancing the reasons for and against; and when ques
tioned, always waited a few moments before he
answered. His decision once taken, he replied : " In
the name of the Lord," and expressed his ideas in
few words, with perfect clearness and in a tone of
affectionate persuasion. His two favorite maxims
were: "To love God in the strength of the arm and
the sweat of the brow, and in every condition of our
neighbor to see an image of Jesus Christ, loving and
serving Jesus Christ in each one, and each one in
Jesus Christ." This was his lesson to his penitents,
teaching them to see nothing new in devotion, but to
make their charity more constant and more pure.

All this answered so well to what Louise was in

the Saint refused the request of Mgr. de Belley to take charge of
Mile. Le Gras until he spoke to him of his venerated friend St.
Francis de Sales ; but we do not find sufficient grounds for such
assertion.

52 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

search of that she could not dispense with his advice ;
and in July 1625, when Vincent went to Provence to
acquaint M. Gondy with the news of his wife s
death, Louise was so afflicted by his absence that
Mgr. Camus, who still watched over her from a dis
tance, was obliged to moderate her grief. " Pardon
me, my dear sister," he wrote her on this occasion,
" when I tell you that you attach yourself too strongly
to those who direct you ; you lean too much on them.
M. Vincent disappears, and behold, Mile. Le Gras
is out of sorts ! \Ve must look well to God in those
who guide and direct us, and sometimes we must
look to God alone, who, without the aid of man or
Bethsaida s pond, can heal our spiritual paralysis.
It is not, dear soul," he adds (so much did he admire
her virtue)" it is not that it annoys me to conduct or
counsel you. Alas ! no. On the contrary, I hope that
you will lead me to heaven, whither your example
invites me more than my advice is calculated to have
in leading you thither; but I do not like to see the
least little imperfection or the least little cloud in the
mind of that Mile. Le Gras of whom I expect such
great things, and whose mind 1 believe to be so
strong." It was, in fact, her strong faculties of mind
that made these slight shades remarkable. In others
they would have been tinperceived.

The letter of Mgr. Camus just quoted shows us
that in the absence of the "very good M. Vincent"
her soul was not neglected, and that she knew to

*Arch. de la Mission.

The Marillacs and the Carmelites. 5 3

whom she could have recourse. The Bishop of
Belley sent her Father Menard* of the Oratory, for
a retreat which she wished to make ; afterwards he
desired her to consult two holy religious, Anne Cath
erine of Beaumont, a remarkable Superioress of the
Visitation,f and the venerable Mother Madeleine of
Saint Joseph, the first French Prioress of the Car
melites. This lady had just founded what was called
the little convent in the Rue Chapon, quite near
Louise. :{: Quite near her, also, were grouped a num
ber of religious women, many of whom had been
under the direction of Mgr. Camus, and to whom he
frequently sent remembrances by Louise, mentioning
their names with affectionate and paternal admoni
tion. Most of these names are now buried in obli
vion, and we only mention Mile. Pollalion (to whom
we shall soon return) and Anne d Attichy, with her
good heart, and another whom we must not forget,
the virtuous widow, Mme. de Marillac.

* This name is probably Mayniard. Little attention was paid at
that time to the orthography of names. Father Charles Mayniard
became pastor of Rouen. He had great devotion for the study of the
Scriptures, and was known to say that other books were only fit to
nourish curiosity.

f Anne Catherine of Beaumont, who came from Annecy with Mme.
de Chantal, was the second Superioress of the first monastery in Paris.
She founded a second monastery in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques,- and
governed successively several houses of the Order. Her life, still
unpublished, was written by Mother de Chaugy.

\ The " little convent" extended from No. 13 Rue Chapon, along the
Rue Beaubourg, to No. 10 of the Rue Cours-au- Villain, where Mile.
Le Gras was living.

54 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

In her own family, indeed, Louise had the most
beautiful example and support resulting from holy
friendship. But she who most attracted the attention
of Mgr. Camus by her exalted virtue was an angelic
soul, one of whom Michel de Marillac had said that she
alone attached him to this world. This was the widow
of Rene de Marillac, who was godfather to young Mi
chel Le Gras.* She aspired only to the Carmelite
Order, which she made a vow to enter as soon as
her brother-in-law and Mother Madeleine would think
the time had come. After four years of widowhood,
free and permitted to follow her attraction, she en
tered the Carmelites, and was reunited to her sister-
in-law and her three daughters. f But who can re
count the profit Louise derived from her relationship
with the head of this predestined family, or the spir
itual conferences she enjoyed with him ! J For this

* Rene de Marillac died in 1621 at the siege of Montauban, leav
ing his heart to the Carmelites at Poissy to be placed in the tomb of
Mme. d Acarie. Shortly after he appeared to Mother Madeleine of
Saint Joseph, who saw him, she says, for a quarter of an hour clearly,
and eminent in glory. (Letters of Mere Madeleine to M. de Maril
lac, cited in the manuscript of Lefevre.)

f Her sister-in-law was Valence de Marillac, received into the
Carmelites on the same day with Mme. Acarie, under the name of
Sister Marie of the Blessed Sacrament. Her three daughters were
Marie of Saint Michel, Marie Madeleine of the Incarnation, and Mar
garet Teresa of Jesus.

\ The archives of the Mission preserve some of the letters of
Michel de Marillac to his niece, which might be called letters of di
rection. They occur between the years 1619 and 1623. Several of
these letters bear on the reverse sheet notes on the subject written

Sickness of M. Le Gras. 55

it would be necessary to know the extraordinary life
of this Keeper of the Seals of France who for forty
years transacted the most important state affairs,
while in his private life he shared the austerities as
well as the miraculous favors of the Carmelites.
Visions of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin, some
times corporeal, sometimes intellectual, and constant
communication with the angels, were his recompense
for a piety and recollection apparently irreconcilable
with the agitations of public life. So writes the mag
istrate who was his biographer.

Mile. Le Gras, full of respect for her uncle and of
confidence in him, found in this relationship that
which was sought for by Mme. Acarie : " A holy
friendship which produces neither separation from
grace nor from tranquillity of mind, but rather helps
us to approach to God in whom we love each other." *

Thus the Lord multiplied helps to strengthen his
servant in the trial. This was not slow in coming,
and was perhaps the most difficult to bear of all trials ;
that is, the sufferings of those who are dear to us.

The health of M. Le Gras was undermined. In the
autumn of 1623 he had been at death s door; since
then his constant sufferings had produced sadness
and irritability. In these circumstances, which gave
Louise an occasion to practice the works of her vo
cation, she redoubled her affection and tenderness,

by Mile. Le Gras. The B. Marie of the Incarnation valued much
these spiritual letters of M. de Marillac.

* Words of B. Marie of the Incarnation, recorded by Lefevre.

5 6 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

and was assiduous in her efforts to assist her husband.
k She wanted neither skill nor intelligence for the
task," said Mgr. Camus, and the courage he had
wished for her, "that she might bear the cross as a
child of the Cross," failed her not. The grace of God
perfected what the love of a Christian woman had be
gun in the soul of the sick man. Recovered from
a brain fever which had threatened his reason, M. Le
Gras felt his fervor return with gratitude for the
tender care bestowed on him, and practices of piety
to which he had been a stranger now found a promi
nent place in his daily life. Every day he recited a
portion of the Office, especially the Psalms, which
inspired him with devotion, while the Passion of our
Lord became the subject of his almost uninterrupted
meditation. His sufferings extended over his entire
body, and his nights were sleepless ; yet those who
waited on him never found his patience fail.

At last severe vomiting of blood announced the
near approach of death, which finally occurred Dec.
21, 1625.* He died fortified by the sacraments of the
Church, and without a distraction from the thought
of God. His wife wrote of this event :f " I was alone

* Christofle Petit, priest in the church of Saint-Paul, who kept a
journal of facts which he knew had occurred, tells us that the remains
of M. Le Gras, having been brought to the church of Saint Sauveur,
were interred in a vault in the chapel of Saint-Amable at Saint Paul s,
Dec. 31, 1625. His brother-in-law, M. de Marillac, was already laid
in the same place. The journal of M. Petit seems to have disap
peared in the burning of the Hotel de Ville in Paris, 1871.

f To Father Rebours, Carthusian, cousin of M. Le Gras.

Death of M. Le Gras. 5 7

to assist him in this important journey. It was night ;
all he said to me was, Pray to God for me ; I can do
so no longer words that shall ever remain engraven
on my heart."

What this separation was for Louise we shall not
attempt to describe. The best commentary on wid
owhood is the etymology of the word itself, vcuvage ;
that is to say, a void, with all its horror and all its
agony. But this void God intended to fill. Crushed
but not discouraged, Louise, after some hours beside
the body of her husband, repaired to the church of
Saint Sauveur, whose pastor* had shown a paternal
kindness to her during all this cruel suffering. " All
for the Divine Spouse now," she confessed, and re
ceived Him who had broken her bonds only to sub
stitute others stronger and still more tender. This
thought sustained her in her grief, f Mgr. Camus
understood it, and he shortly after wrote to her in
strong language worthy of her whom he addressed :
" At last, my very dear sister, the Lord of our souls,
having taken your spouse to his bosom, places Him
self in yours. O Celestial Spouse, be ever such to
my dear sister who chose you even when divided.
Remain on her heart as a bouquet of myrrh, sweet to

* Jean Hollandre de Montdidier, rector of the University of Paris,
He died May 21, 1628.

\ " Providence placing me in a state of widowhood, gave me the grace
of desiring to be united to Him for time and eternity." (Letter of Mile.
Le Gras to St. Vincent.)

58 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

the smell, but bitter to the taste." : And some weeks
after, knowing her to be troubled and tempted to be
lieve herself in darkness and desolation, he again
wrote : " O daughter of little faith, why do you doubt ?
I must say to you as our Saviour said to Mary at the
tomb of Lazarus: If you had more fortitude you
would see the glory of God in you. How, I know
not ; but I believe it firmly/ f Calm soon settled on
the soul of Louise, and, like the Bishop of Belley, she
waited, ready for anything that God might demand
of her.

* Letter dated Feb. 22, Pont de Beauvoisin, the market-town of his
diocese, where, "being the voice in the wilderness," he preached the
Lenten sermons.

f March 26.

CHAPTER IV.

1625 1629.

Louise changes her Residence New Rule of Life The Confraternities
of Charity First Servant of the Poor.

[AMPS whose oil is aromatic shed a
sweet odor when the light is extin
guished," says St. Francis de Sales.
Hence widows whose love was pure
in marriage shed the sweet odor of virtue when their
light, that is their husband, is extinct by death." " In
the Church," continues the same holy Doctor, "the
true widow is the March violet, exhaling incompa
rable sweetness from the fervor of her devotion ;
hiding always under the large leaves of her abjection,
her quiet, modest color reveals her mortification ; and
she ever seeks the uncultivated soil, lest worldly
conversation should crush her and tarnish the fresh
ness of her heart." * Such was to be the future life
of Louise : a life crushed in the eyes of worldlings,
but transformed and wondrously purified in the sight
of God. A short time after the death of her husband
she wrote to a religious of her family : " Is it not now
quite reasonable that I should belong entirely to
God, after having been devoted to the world for so
long ? I wish it with all my heart, in whatever way

"Introduction to a Devout Life, "part iv. chap. xi.

60 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

He pleases, although I have much reason to distrust
myself." And she adds : " Cheer up, therefore, and
help my poor soul to break its chains."

She did not lack the courage to break them her
self. Wishing to follow up a plan in conformity with
her new life, she resolved to leave the house she had
occupied with her husband at Marais and take up
her abode in a remote suburb of Paris, Rue Saint-
Victor.* At a time when there were none of our fine
roads, nor any of our marvellous means of rapid
transit, placing in instant communication the extrem
ities of a large city, her change of abode was tanta
mount to exile. f

It was the renunciation of the dwelling-place of
the Marillacs and the neighborhood of a family so
dear to her ; it was tearing herself away from those
friends that survive all others the haunts of one s
childhood ; a separation from her whole past life : and
hence was blamed by many outside of the immediate
circle to which we refer.

The world criticised what it could not understand ;
but silence and forgetfulness soon followed, and there
was nothing to disturb the solitude of Louise. The
quarter of the city which she had selected was poor

* A letter of St. Vincent de Paul of October 8, 1627, is addressed
"a Mlie. Le Gras, Rue Saint-Victor au logis ou logeait M. Tiron,
Saint-Priest." Another letter of a priest, M. Regourd, dated 1629,
bears this inscription : "a Mile. Le Gras, chez M. Gudoin, auditeur
des comptes, Rue Saint-Victor."

f The city post was not established in Paris until 1653. The first
omnibuses, or carrosses publiques (sic), date from 1664,

A Change of Residence. 61

and chiefly inhabited by religious communities, and
she there found precious conveniences in almost the
very best means of education for her son, now her
earnest and nearly her sole occupation.

On the declivity of the hill surmounted by the
tomb of the patron of Paris stood quite a number of
celebrated colleges,* from among which she chose the
seminary of Saint-Nicolas, recently founded by M.
Bourdoise.f Above all and this it was that deter
mined her choice it brought her nearer to St. Vin
cent. A great change, which we must mention in a
few words, had taken place in the life of her spiritual
guide. Madame de Gondy had presented him with
forty thousand livres for the purpose of establishing
and extending on her estate his mission. From her
brother-in-law, the Archbishop of Paris, she obtained
for him at the same time a central position in a bene
fice situated near the gate of Saint- Victor.

This old house, built in the thirteenth century to
accommodate thirteen pupils, retained its name of
College des Bons-Enfants, although it had long been
untenanted. Still detained in the world by the affec-

* Piganiol in his " Description historique de la Ville de Paris" gives
more than thirty.

f The Seminary of Saint- Nicolas-du-Chardonnet took its name
from the church beside it, and was erected for the double purpose of
raising young clergymen and maintaining priests in their vocation by
community life. St. Vincent considered this house one of the
holiest in the Church of God. M. Bourdoise was predecessor of La
Salle, and had founded a Christian school which was quite cele
brated.

62 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

tion of his benefactors, Vincent took possession by
installing a young priest, his disciple and friend, M.
Portail,* and the year after, being freed from duty
by the death of the pious countess, he hastened to
join his disciple. The two pious friends would leave
their key with a neighbor and set out together in
answer to the invitations of bishops, going from vil
lage to village " to evangelize the poor, simply and
in good faith as our Saviour had done." St. Vin
cent s stay at Bons-Enfants was short and irregular,
and in consequence Mile. Le Gras could not hope to
see him as often as she needed except by remaining
in the neighborhood. Such, we have said, was her
principal motive in coming to this suburb, where ten
years of her life were to be spent. For her and for
St. Vincent it was a new phase of life begun ; but
whilst the Apostle was reproducing the active life of
the Saviour, ignorant of the future, she sought only
to honor the hidden life of Jesus at Nazareth that
period at once the longest and most mysterious of
the stay of Jesus Christ amongst us ; that silent, un
known life which had always been the object of her
special devotion.f In order to establish the struc-

* Antoine Portail, born in Beaucaire, diocese of Aries, Nov. 22,
1590, came to Paris at the age of 20, and placed himself under the
direction of St. Vincent, who employed him immediately after his
ordination in the spiritual service of the galleys. He lived with him
in Rue Saint-Honore until sent by St. Vincent to the College of Bons-
Enfants.

f Letters of Saint Vincent, published by a priest of the Mission.
Paris, 1881.

A New Rule of Life. 63

ture of "her interior life on a solid and visible founda
tion, and instructed by the " Philothea," she wished
to write with her own hand a sort of consecration
which would be the contract of her union with Jesus
Christ. This article, which cannot be read without
interest, still bears the trace of St. Vincent s correc
tions. It is as follows :

" I, the undersigned, in the presence of the eternal
God, having considered that, on the day of my holy
baptism, I was vowed and dedicated to God to be
His daughter, and that nevertheless I have so much
and so many times sinned against His most holy will ;
considering, also, the immense mercy, love, and sweet
ness with which this good God has always main
tained in me the desire to love and serve Him not
withstanding the guilt of my almost continual resist
ance, and although I have all my life neglected and
abused the great graces which His goodness had
given me, unworthy, vile creature that I am, com
ing at last to myself, I detest in my past life the
iniquities which render me guilty of the death of
Jesus Christ, and have deserved that I should be
condemned worse than Lucifer. But, confiding in
the mercy of God, I ask of Him pardon and full ab
solution as well for sins confessed as for those forgot
ten, and especially for the abuse I have made of
the sacraments, being only a contempt of His good
ness, for which I now repent with my whole heart,
relying on the death of my Saviour as the only
ground of my hope, and in virtue of which I renew

64 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

the promises made to God for me at my baptism,
and I resolve irrevocably to love and serve Him
with more fidelity, giving myself entirely to Him.
For this purpose I renew my former vow of widow
hood, and my resolutions to practise the holy virtues
of humility, obedience, poverty, suffering, and char
ity, to honor these same virtues in Jesus Christ, and
with which He so often inspired me by His love, pro
testing also never more to offend God by any por
tion of my being, and to abandon myself entirely to
His holy Providence for the accomplishment of His
will in me, to which I dedicate and sacrifice myself
forever, choosing it for my chief consolation. I im
plore now the assistance of the Holy Spirit, should
I happen by my accustomed weakness to do anything
contrary to these sentiments that I may rise imme
diately, and not remain one instant an enemy to
God. This is my irrevocable will, which I confirm
in the presence of God, of the Holy Virgin, my good
Angel, and all the Saints, before the Church Militant,
which hears me in the person of my spiritual father,
who, holding the place of God, must help me to ac
complish these resolutions, according to the holy will
of God/ After thus invoking as witness of her reso
lutions all that is most august in heaven and on earth,
Louise concludes by this prayer : " Be pleased, O my
God, to confirm these resolutions and consecrations,
and accept them in the odor of sweetness. As Thou
hast inspired me to make them, give me grace to
perform them. O my God ! Thou art my God and

A Neiv Rule of Life. 65

my all ! Thus I acknowledge and adore Thee, one
only God in three Divine Persons, now and forever.
May Thy love and the love of Jesus crucified live
forever! LOUISE DE MARILLAC."*

Here we may notice another writing of Mile. Le
Gras not less precious for us ; that is, a rule which
embraced all the details of her life, and was the sen
timent of her act of consecration put into practical
form. Drawn up at the suggestion of St. Vincent,
this document becomes doubly interesting. First,
because it gives us an example of the rules traced
by the Saint for people in the world under his direc
tion. These persons were few, of course, and already
advanced in perfection. Secondly, because, in show
ing us the particular attractions of Louise, he lets
us admire the first light of her vocation. " The ob
ject of my aspirations," she says, " is holy poverty; that,
free from hindrance, I may follow Jesus Christ, and
serve my neighbor in meekness and humility, living
in obedience and chastity all my life." Poverty,
chastity, and obedience were the virtues of the reli
gious life which she was to approach as near as pos
sible without being able to reach.

Louise fixed her hour of rising at half-past five
from Easter to the Feast of All Saints, and at six
o clock for the rest of the year. Prayer immediately
after rising. " Not shorter than one hour," she wrote

* It was thus, according to the custom of the time, that Mile. Le
Gras signed all her letters.

66 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

on the margin. The matter of her prayer was taken
from the Gospels, or the life of the Saint of the day.
Afterward she recited the Prime and Tierce of
our Lady sedately, bearing in mind the meaning of
prayer. Her domestic arrangements and orders for
the household were attended to while dressing.
Every day Mass, at half-past eight o clock in summer,
and at nine in winter; at one time uniting herself
simply to the intention of the Church, at other times
making use of the points given in " Philothea," or in
another book called " Dosithea."

" Returning to her apartment, she will, to avoid
idleness, work until eleven o clock, then dine, after

reading a chapter from ." * (The title of the book

remains blank.) " At noon seven minutes prayer to
honor the Incarnation of the Word in the bosom of
Mary. This over, she will go cheerfully to work,
either for the Church or the poor, a two-fold and
holy method of clothing Jesus Christ. Otherwise
for her household ; and this to continue till four
o clock, unless she has indispensable visits to make
or receive. At four o clock, when charity or pro
priety presents no obstacle, she will retire to the
nearest church to recite Vespers from the Office
of the Blessed Virgin. During the Office she
will reflect on the half-hour s prayer which is to
follow.

" The time remaining before supper to be divided
between reading and sewing. At five o clock exam-

* Probably the New Testament.

A Neiu Rule of Life. 67

ination of conscience on the commandments of God
and the duties of a Christian woman aspiring to per
fection. The Office of Matins concludes the day,
during which the Rosary also must find a place, with
frequent elevations of the soul to God." " I will try,"
she writes, " to place myself in the presence of God
at least four times every hour, exciting as much as
possible the desire of His love. On the first Satur
day of every month," she adds, " I shall renew my
vows and good resolutions, reading my protestation
before or after Holy Communion, and that on Satur
day, because I have taken the Holy Virgin as a pro
tectress against my weakness and inconstancy, and
also that, by her intercession, I may, the rest of my
life, honor the preference of God for virginity over
marriage." Further on there is a void in the manu
script where the Communion days were indicated.
She resolves to fight against two faults especially
vanity and too great exactness and this by mortifi
cation and penance : the discipline two or three
times a week, the cincture during the morning of
Communion days and the whole of Friday ; fasting
not only during Advent and Lent, but also on Fri
days, and on the eves of all festivals of our Lord, of
the Blessed Virgin, and of the Saints, and two meals
a day for the rest of the year. She wished to make
two retreats during the year, the first from the
Ascension to Pentecost, the second during Advent,
ending by a complete abandonment of herself to the
Divine Will, that the entire effect of the designs of

68 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

God on her soul from all eternity might be accom
plished.

In spite of the obscurity in the first line of the
following, might it not be the answer of St. Vin
cent to one or other of the writings we have just
given ? In the absence of proof we may conjecture.
" It seems to me," he wrote to Louise, " that it will
be quite enough to write in your tablet * the words
of the original ; place them in it, if you please. As
for me, I shall keep in my heart the generous resolu
tions you have written me, to honor the adorable
hidden life of our Lord, since He has given you this
desire from your childhood. O my dear daughter,
that thought savors of the inspiration of God. How
far it is from flesh and blood ! It is the state of soul
necessary for a child of God."f

Mile. Le Gras could not yet see the work which
God had reserved for her. She aspired to great
activity, to a more entirely devoted life. Her inter
course with St. Vincent, the contact with this heart
so overflowing with charity, made her desire to asso
ciate herself with his work and devote herself en
tirely to the poor. But in what way she knew not ;
nor did her director, for he confined himself to
advising her to pray, to consult God in Holy Com
munion, and to rely on His providence to do the rest.

* To explain this sentence M. Maynard supposes that she had
made a summary of the sentiments of her act of consecration, to be
kept before her eyes on a tablet.

f Letter of St. Vincent de Paul.

Interior Trials. 69

Their correspondence is full of this. Sometimes it is
she who depicts the impatience of her soul, and her
apprehensions for the future.* " Sometimes the days
appear like months, in my good-for-nothing state,"
she says. " I wish, however, to await tranquilly the
hour marked by God, and acknowledge that my un-
worthiness keeps it back." " Yes," replies the Saint,
"await in patience the evidences of His most holy
will;" and taking up the thought of Louise on the
mystery of Nazareth, her ordinary subject of prayer,
he continues : " Always honor our Lord, in that He
was unknown to be the Son of God. Rest in that
thought ; He demands this of you for the present
and the future. Should His Divine Majesty show
you what it is He requires of you, in such a manner
as to make deception impossible, do not think about
it, but let me know at once. I can do thinking
enough for two." f Many saints have counted
among their most severe trials that obscurity of the
soul in which they feel impelled to desire great
service for God, yet must hold back for want of
power to accomplish anything ; seeking ever without
finding ; knocking and no door opened : like the
dove which would fly but has no wings, or the
traveller groping his way in the dark. For Mile. Le
Gras this delay was a kind of novitiate, which served
to strengthen her courage. It lasted two years ; but
her perseverance at length triumphed over the wise

* June 7, 1627. f Letter 117.

70 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

slowness of her guide, and she obtained his permis
sion to help him in some of his labors. We find her,
accordingly, assisting him as procuratrix on his
apostolic journey, transmitting to him the offerings
of those who were endeavoring to counteract the
evil influence of some rich Huguenots in a village
near Poissy.* In 1628 she was engaged in finding
places for poor girls he had sent her from the coun
try ; and in 1629 she was actively employed under
his direction in striving to extend the association
known as " Confrerie de la Charite," which he
had founded for the relief of the sick poor. This
work was to imprint on the life of Mile. Le Gras its
definite direction, and give birth to the Company of
Daughters of Charity ; hence it merits a brief notice
as to its origin and organization.

Vincent conceived the first idea of this work
when on parish duty at Chatillon, two years pre
vious. It is thus related by his faithful biographer
Abelly: "One festival day," he says, "as Vincent
ascended the pulpit to preach, he was stopped by a
noble lady f who begged him to recommend to the
charity of his people a family in extreme poverty and
sickness who were living, or rather dying, about half
a league distant It pleased God to give such effi
cacy to his words that after the sermon a number of
persons went out to visit this poor family, taking

* Verneuil (letter of St. Vincent, dated from that place, Oct. 8,
1627, and addressed to " Mile. Le Gras, Rue Saint- Victor, Paris"),
f Mme. de la Chassaigne.

The Confraternity of Charity. 7 1

bread, wine, meat, and other such necessaries. After
vespers Vincent took the road to .the farm, accompa
nied by some of the parishioners, not knowing that
others had gone before him, and was not a little sur
prised to meet many persons on the road returning
from the poor family, several of whom were resting
under the trees from the excessive heat. The words
of the Gospel occurred to him, that these good peo
ple were like sheep without a shepherd. This/ he
said to them, is a great charity, but it is not well
regulated. These good people will have too many
provisions at once, and part will spoil or waste, and
they will be left as badly provided for as before.
This thought led him to confer with some of the
most zealous ladies of his parish, on the days follow
ing, about the best means of permanently assisting
this poor family and others who might be in like cir
cumstances in the future. He drew up the plan of a
rule which they should observe, and exhorted them
to give themselves to God in order to put this rule
in practice. He then chose some amongst them as
officers, who were to meet him once a month and
give him an account of what had transpired."

That work, so humble in its origin, so great in its
consequences, seemed intended only for a small
country town, but it extended to the neighboring
towns ; and Vincent, on his return to the Gondy fam
ily, hastened to establish it in Villepreux with the
assistance of the Countess of Joigny, who wished to

72 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

take part in the work ; also at Folleville,* Joigny,f
Montmirail, and thirty parishes of 1 Ile de France, in
Champagne and at Picardy ; that is to say, in all the
territory dependent on the General of the Galleys.

The Confraternity was approved by the Arch
bishop of Lyons in 1617, by the Archbishop of Paris
in 1618, and by the Bishop of Amiens in 16204

The rules varied with local circumstances, but re
mained identical in their grand outline. A copy is
furnished us in an unpublished note from the hand of

* Villepreux, a village of eight hundred inhabitants, now in the
canton of Marly-le-Roi.

f Folleville, a village in the Department of the Somme, where we
find a picturesque ruin of the castle of Gondy, also the church and
even the pulpit in which St. Vincent used to preach.

^ Thtse Confraternities were not established without some opposi
tion, if we may judge from the following which was recently published,
and which we believe worthy of reproduction: " Plan of the requisi
tion and suit of M. le Lieutenant de Beauvais against authorizing a
company which M. Vincent wishes to establish in this place. For
asmuch as it has been ordained by the king s solicitors that it is
strictly forbidden by royal ordinance and decree for any person to es
tablish or direct any company or Confraternity in this kingdom with
out letters patent from his majesty; and whereas we have been ad
vised that, notwithstanding this decree, for the past fifteen days in this
city a certain priest named Vincent, setting aside all authority of the
king, and without consulting the official authorities of this city, has
assembled a number of women whom he persuaded to form into a
Confraternity to which he gives the specious name of Charity, the
ostensible purport of said Confraternity being to relieve with food
and other necessaries the sick poor in the city aforesaid of Beauvais;
these women go, once in the week, in quest of money to aid in this
project that this should have been done by this said Vincent and
said Confraternity, in which he has 300 women or thereabout, whom

The Confraternity of Charity. 73

Mile. Le Gras preserved among her papers.* The
end of the society and the duty of its members are
contained in ten articles which we shall touch upon
briefly.

The end for which the Confraternity is established
the rule says, " is to assist the sick poor ; spiritually,
that those who die may leave the world in a good
state, and that those who recover may take the res
olution never more to offend God ; and corporally,
by administering medicines and nourishment ; finally,
to accomplish the ardent desire of our Saviour that
we love one another. The patron of the Confrater
nity is our Saviour Jesus Christ, Charity itself." The
Confraternity is to be composed of a certain number
of women and girls, admitted with the consent of
their husbands or parents, and called " Servants of

he often assembles for the exercises and functions herein explained
this is what we affirm should not be tolerated. In accordance with
the edicts and decrees herein cited, it is required that this be inquired
into and information provided. That such information be forwarded
to the Procurator of the King. We have the honor to remain," etc.

The title of this document, " Projet de requisitoire," seems to indi
cate that the proceedings were commenced and not continued. (Feillet,
"La Misere au Temps de la Fronde.")

* We find, also, in the letters of St. Vincent the rules of the Con
fraternity of Montreuil. Those of Chatillon, which comprise the de
tails of the pious exercises given the associates, are quoted by Gossin.
(" Saint Vincent de Paul, as seen in his Writings," 1834), and by May-
nard " Saint Vincent de Paul," vol. 3). These rules were not ordinarily
decreed until experience had proved what might be added and what
retrenched. "Our Saviour," wrote St. Vincent, "gave the law of
grace to man without having written it; let us do the same for some
time." (Letter xcvii., addressed to Mile. Le Gras.)

74 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

the Poor." A directress, who is to be chosen by
themselves every two years, by a plurality of votes
and with the approbation of the parish priest, shall
decide on the sick who are to be admitted, and shall
collect all the alms in a box with two keys, one of
which she shall keep, the other shall be kept by one
of her two assistants. The Servants of the Poor
shall consider the. sick as children whose mothers
they have been constituted by God. They shall
serve in turn, each one taking a day to carry the
meat from the butcher and the bread from the baker,
wine also from the hotel ;* to prepare the dinner, and
carry it to the sick at nine o clock in the morning,
doing the same for supper at five in the evening, and
notifying the one who succeeds her on the next day
both of the number and condition of the sick. Every
day, morning and evening, they shall say a Pater and
Avefor the growth and preservation of the Confrater
nity, and shall communicate when possible at the Mass
said once a month for their Confraternity and their
poor. Above all, they should cherish one another as
sisters who make profession of honoring our Saviour
in the virtue which He most constantly practised
and most affectionately recommended charity. To
this end they shall visit and help one another sick or
well, pray for one another, especially in times of sick
ness and of death, and do all in their power that each
one leave this world in a good state.

* Each sick person was allowed a half-measure of wine, four or five
ounces of meat or soup, two eggs, and bread at discretion.

The Confraternity of Charity. 75

Like those winged seeds of grain which are carried
along by the wind, the Confraternity, or Charity as it
was often called, had already taken root in many
places far from its native soil, when St. Vincent,
at the request of many charitable persons, established
it in Paris in the parish of Saint Sauveur.* This was
only a trial, and he was waiting to see the result,
when Mile. Le Gras, certain of the approbation of
the priest of Saint Nicolas and expecting the help
of five or six ladies in her neighborhood^ begged his
permission to organize the Confraternity in the quar
ter where she lived. Unfortunately the details of
this commencement have not come down to us ; but
from her correspondence with St. Vincent, who
was then absent, we learn that this was the first work
in which she took the initiative or depended on her
self to put into execution. We cannot dwell upon
the confraternities of Saint Eustache, Saint Benoit,
and Saint Paul, to which she was doubtless no stran
ger ; but we must notice here a modification, il not
in the spirit of the work, at least in its mode of action,
and one which, if secondary in appearance, was very
considerable in reality.

The first associates were, as will be remembered,
women and girls who, accustomed to labor from their
childhood, found no difficulty in serving the sick with

* 1629.

f Among these probably was the daughter of a gentleman of Ni-
vernais, Mile, de Blosset. Later on she became the foundress of the
" Filles de Sainte Genevieve."

76 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

their own hands. It could not be the same in Paris,
where a number of ladies of rank wished to associate
themselves with the Confraternity. How great so
ever their zeal, they could not descend to all the de
tails of the rule ; for, admitting that they could brave
the danger of contagion with the sick, how could
they prepare a dinner with their own hands and
carry it to the poor? On the other hand, to leave
this to their servants was repugnant to their piety, as
compromising the interests of the sick. St . Vin
cent understood the void and endeavored to fill it.
He remembered to have met in the villages young
girls who, having no inclination for marriage and no
means to become religious, wished to devote them
selves to good works, and he resolved that when he
found others of that class he would send them to Paris
and make use of them in serving the sick under the
direction of the ladies who could not undertake this
duty.

A young girl of Surrene was the first to offer a
chosen soul, whose simple, touching story we must
relate.

Marguerite Naseau was a poor shepherdess
whose constant dream, even before she could spell,
was to teach little children. Her first pennies she
gave for a primer, which she studied while watching
her cows ; and when she perceived a peasant whose
appearance seemed to indicate that he could read,
she ran to him with the request that he would tell

her such a letter or such a word. Becoming mistress

.

The First Servant of the Poor. 77

in her turn, she hastened to communicate her knowl
edge to her companions. Soon she resolved to go
from village to village to instruct children. Two
or three of her pupils were gained over to the pro
ject, and they separated to go to different places,
without money, without help, having for their only
resource the zeal God had placed in their hearts.
Marguerite told Mile. Le Gras that often she passed
days without a morsel of bread ; but she never lost
courage, and in the end Providence always sent her,
often on her return from church and without her
knowing from whom they came, a store of provisions
sufficient for a long time. Derided, calumniated
even, by the villagers, who could not understand
this kind of life, she was all the happier, and contin
ued to employ her days in teaching the little ones
she knew, and even found means from her poverty to
pay for the education of young ecclesiastics, of whom
several became fervent priests. One day she hap
pened to meet Vincent de Paul, and learned from him
of the existence of a Confraternity for the assistance
of the poor sick. Although much attached to her
modest duty of school-teaching, she saw in the other
calling a more complete vocation, and joyfully offered
her services to Mile. Le Gras,* who sent her to the
" Ladies of Charity" in the parish of Saint Sauveur.
Other young girls soon followed her example, and

* Particulars of this " first Sister of Charity" are found in "Con
ferences ou Notices sur les Sceurs defuntes," published in 1845 but
not sold.

78 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

as they came they were sent to parishes where the
Confraternity was organized.

Two or three young girls employed in carrying
remedies or nourishment to the sick was not an insti
tution, nor even the beginning of a distinct work,
in the opinion of M. Vincent, who often repeated that
neither he nor Mile. Le Gras had the least idea of
being the founder of anything. How astonished
would both ha v ve been had they been permitted at
that time to foresee the countless generations which
were to issue from this humble cradle ! But the most
sublime productions have oftenest the most humble
origin. God made the body of man from a little
dust, and submitted all things here below to the law
of germination. Man, history, society, unfold under
the same law which rules the plant. First the bud,
then the leaf, and finally the flower. We are now
speaking of the germ of this society ; twenty-five
years later the branches had spread. The flowering
was reserved to our time, under the form of twenty
thousand Daughters of Charity scattered to-day over
the two hemispheres.

CHAPTER V.

16291631.

St. Vincent sends Mile. Le Gras to visit the Confraternities of the
Province Mile. Pollalion Pestilence in France Death of Mar
guerite Naseau Maternal Cares of Louise.

gHE INTELLIGENT and devoted activity
displayed by Louise in the establishment
of " Charity" in Paris decided St. Vin
cent to confide to her at this epoch a more
delicate and difficult mission. The provincial associ
ations were multiplied everywhere ; but with no com
mon bond of union, and far from the superintendence
of the founder, they needed in time the benefit of a
common impulse, in order to attain the end of their
calling. St. Vincent commissioned Mile. Le Gras to
visit them. " Go, Mademoiselle," he wrote to her ;*
" go in the name of our Lord. I pray His divine
goodness to accompany you, to be your counsellor
on the road, your shade in the heat, your shelter in
rain and cold, your bed of rest when weary, your
strength in toil, and to bring you back in perfect
health and full of good works." This mark of con
fidence decided the future of Mile. Le Gras. One
more instance of that mysterious law which so fre
quently associates the heart of a woman with the

* May 12, 1629.

8o Life of Mile. Le Gras.

greatest foundations of the saints, and she becomes
henceforth the helper of St. Vincent de Paul and
mother to the poor his children. Obeying with
joy, she communicated, on the morning of her depar
ture, in honor of the Charity of our Saviour and His
journeys, so full of pain, labor, and fatigue, also to
obtain grace to act in the same spirit with which He
acted.* Then she set out, taking with her a supply
of linen and remedies which she herself had bought,
and furnished with letters of introduction and
written directions from St. Vincent as to the di-
ferent points to which he wished to call her atten
tion.

Montmirail, in the diocese of Soissons, was the
goal of this first visit, to which so many other apos
tolic journeys, if we may say so, were to succeed
during the space of ten years. Everything leads
us to believe that the traveller at first took the
Champagne stage, which stopped at the Sign of
the Cardinal, opposite Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs ;
but soon obliged to abandon that mode of travel,
she shortened her distances, sometimes in rick
ety coaches, sometimes in carts, many times on
foot, with short halts at the poor inns, " so as to take
part in the misery of the poor."f It is probable that
she was not alone ; St. Vincent, no doubt, gave her
as her companion one of the pious women who fol
lowed later in her journeys, and whose names we find

* Letter already quoted, 1629. f Gobillon, p. 33.

Mile. Foliation. 81

in the Saint s letters. These are "good Mile. Fay,*
one in whom he had the greatest confidence ;"f
Mile, de Villesien, whom he called his dear daughter ;^
Mile. Dufresne, wife of one of his oldest friends, to
whom he used to send kind messages of remem
brance from these journeys of charity ; Mile. Polla-
lion, whom similarity of tastes as well as of trials had
attached particularly to Louise. She had thought of
entering the Convent of Capuchins in Rue Saint-
Honore ; but her parents, on pretext of health, had
persuaded her to give up that idea and marry Fran
cis Poltalion, a resident of Raguse, in France. He
died in Rome, a few years after their marriage.
Being left a widow at the age of twenty-six, of rare
beauty, and endowed with extraordinary intelligence,
she delayed no longer at court, upon which she had
shed an odor of virtue, and even, as we are told, of
miracles, but devoted herself to good works under
the direction of St. Vincent de Paul, who, having
proved her spirit and the light God had given her,
sent her with Mile. Le Gras and some other ladies
to visit the country missions and confraternities of

* Letter xi., Feb. 9, 1628.

f " My heart," wrote St. Vincent, proposes a project which it
keeps secret. I must not reveal it to your heart, nor to Mile. Fay s."
(Letter xi.)

\ Letter of St. Vincent to Mile. Le Gras, Montmirail, Sept. 13,
1631.

M. Dufresne, secretary to Queen Marguerite, first wife of Henry
IV., afterwards steward to M. de Gondy.

82 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

charity established in the provinces.* These two
souls seemed made to understand each other. Mile.
Pollalion, ardent, enterprising, recoiling before no
obstacle, equally capable of publicly slapping a
woman for trying to pervert a young girl, and of
dressing like a domestic to gain, by meekness, other
women not less depraved, or becoming a peasant to
instruct the ignorant villagers : such a one could
not but gain by contact with Mile. Le Gras, always
so wise, so prudent and self-possessed. The latter
could also learn from Mile. Pollalion to crown the
exactness and energy of her character with a deci
sion and confidence less natural to her than to her
friend.

We would like to know which of her companions
accompanied Louise to Montmirail; but we are
obliged to be content with the few facts which his
tory has preserved. It was in this way that Mile.
Le Gras helped St. Vincent to pay the debt of grati
tude contracted by the priests of the Mission towards
the house of Gondy. The memory of the Countess
of Joigny was in all hearts, as also the generous
resolution of her husband, who had forsaken all his
dignities and consecrated himself to God ; f hence

* "Vie de la Venerable Servante de Dieu, Marie Lumague, veuve
de M. Poilalion, Institutrice des Filles de la Providence." Paris, chez
Herissant, a la croix d or et aux trois vertus. 1744.

f "The love of M. de Gondy for his wife," says the Abbe Hous-
saye, "was that of one ever faithful to his vows." When left a
widower he entered the Oratory, and there led a holy life, dying in
1662, aged 81 years. His life, written by P. Cloyseault, has been

Visits to the Provincial Confraternities. 83

Louise encountered no difficulty in the exercise of
her zeal. She assembled the women of the Confra
ternity, instructed and encouraged them, endeavored
to increase their number, instilled vigor into the prac
tice of the rule ; and that she might preach by exam
ple, she herself visited and served the sick, and in her
own person revived the ministry and office of the
widows of the first century, who were chosen to in
struct the ignorant and rustic in language propor
tioned to their capacity, and teach them the Chris
tian doctrine, as well as the obligations contracted by
Christian baptism.

The first trial of a work so new to the time and
country in which it was undertaken was fully justi
fied by the result. The following year* Mile. Le
Gras again visited Saint Cloud,f where St. Vincent
de Paul wrote to her, " I bless God that you have
health for the sixty persons for whose salvation you
are laboring" Villepreux, Villiers-le-Sec,$ Liancourt
and Bulle, where she taught the catechism to

published by P. Ingold in the first volume of the " Bibliotheque
Oratorienne."

* February, 1630.

f The residence of Saint- Cloud, which, after being the theatre of
brilliant entertainments given by Catherine de Medicis, was the scene
of the assassination of Henry III. and the accession of Henry IV.,
was known at this time as the house of Gondy.

\ Some one sent her a letter here from St. Vincent, dated Oct. 22,
1630.

Liancourt and Bulle, little villages of Beauvoisis, now in the
canton of Clermont.

84 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

little girls and formed school-teachers. But in the
endeavor to live and sleep like the poor people whom
she visited * she overtaxed her strength and fell sick,
as we learn by letters from St. Vincent. " Is not
your heart well consoled," he writes to her, " to have
been found worthy to suffer in serving God ? Cer
tainly you owe him a special thanksgiving for that/ f
And soon after he writes : " Blessed be God that you
have recovered ; but if you have any symptoms of a
relapse, prevent it, if you please, and return. Take
good care of your health, for the love of our Lord
and His members, the poor. Guard well against
trying to do too much.

" It is a ruse of the devil to incite good souls to do
too much, so that they will not be able to do any
thing. The Spirit of God, on the contrary, incites us
to do quietly the good we are able to do, so that we
may persevere longer in doing it. That you may be
fortified against all return to self, unite your heart to
all the mockery, contempt, and bad treatment re
ceived by the Son of God. When you are esteemed
and honored, be truly humbled in spirit and humili
ated as much in honor as in contempt ; do like the
bee, which gathers honey from the dew on the
wormwood as well as from that on the rose."

This last letter was addressed to Beauvais, where
Mile. Le Gras was enjoying most brilliant success.

* Letter of Mathurine Guerin to Marguerite Chetif, on the virtues
of Mile. Le Gras. (Arch, de la Mission.)
f Letter of St. Vinrent, Oct. 22, 1630

An Accident. 85

She visited eighteen confraternities of charity in
Beauvais, for the bishop wished that every parish
in his city and the neighborhood should have one of
her confraternities.* She gave Conferences for the
women, which were attended secretly by men also ; f
and they produced such a lively impression on
the people that when she set out to return to Paris
they accompanied her on the way and loaded her
with blessings. God seemed to authorize these
honors by a favor which the popular enthusiasm
esteemed a miracle. A child, pressed by the crowd,
fell under the carriage, and one of the wheels passed
over its body. Attracted by the cry, Mile. Le Gras
invoked the name of God in her heart, and the child
jumped up safe and sound. \ Was this fact super
natural, and what portion of it belonged to Louise ?
We cannot decide this question ; moreover, the
answer would do no good. " Charity," says St. John
Chrysostom, " is a miracle, the most excellent of all
miracles ;" and this great Doctor adds : u The grace of
miracles may be common to the just and to sinners,
as there are robes common to the king and his sub
jects ; but charity is the supreme gift ; it is the pri
vilege of saints, as the crown and sceptre are the
ornaments reserved for kings, by which we recog
nize their dignity." Hence what we admire most in
Mile. Le Gras is this virtue by excellence, which,
implanted in her soul by the Holy Spirit, and espe-

* At the house of M. du Rotoir at Beauvais, Dec. 7, 1630.
f Abelly, vol. i. p. 108. \ Gobillon, p. 43.

86 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

cially cultivated by her two directors, became more
and more the seal of God on the soul of His servant.
The misfortunes of the time were also a rude ap
prenticeship for her. From the end of the year 1628
the plague was, so to speak, acclimated in France,
and committing ravages there the actual extent of
which we cannot give. The filthy condition of the
streets, want of air, lack of science, absence of regu
lar police, all contributed to increase the terror pro
duced by the disease, the contagious character of
which was greatly exaggerated. All obligations of
friendship, the dearest ties of kindred, were forgot
ten in the presence of a malady which could be
communicated by the touch, and exhaled from the
breath of the plague-stricken patient, and by which
everything he made use of was impregnated.
The cities were deserted, and for months grass grew
in the streets, and packs of wolves prowled about at
night, attracted by the stench of the unburied dead.
" Farmers themselves," says a historian of the time,
" forsook the plough and threw down the axe." A
year of plague brought a year of famine, which was
in turn succeeded by another year of plague, a mur
derous cycle which continued to revolve for a long
time.* In June 1631 the Hotel Dieu of Paris con
tained constantly eighteen hundred sick, just four
times as many as its resources permitted it. to re-
ceive.f The " Charities" of the parishes redoubled

* M. Bougand, " Histoire de Sainte Jeanne-Fransoise deChantal.
f M. Feillet, "La Misereau Temps de la Fronde."

Pestilence in France, 87

their efforts, Mile. Le Gras, in particular, exposing
her life in such a way as to elicit a burst of admira
tion from St. Vincent, familiar as he was with hero
ism. What a contrast, we may remark in passing,
could we place side by side the courage of Louise
de Marillac, attending the plague-stricken with her
own hands, and the nervousness of some women of
our day, forever taking precautions against bad air,
and shutting off all intercourse with their friends for
the slightest cold ! *

The health of Mile. Le Gras was not in the least
affected, as St. Vincent had foretold with other
things. " Fear not," he wrote to her ; " our Lord
wishes to make use of you in something tending to
His glory, and I feel that He will preserve you for
that work." f

Another victim, however, was selected from
among the helpers of " Charity." To the first of

* The Marquis of Sable and his friend the Countess of Maure,
(Anne Doni d Attichy, cousin of Mile. Le Gras) went to such ex
tremes as to furnish Mile. Montpensier with special characters for her
Romance, " The Princess of Paphlagonia." Hardly an hour passed
that they were not considering the means of escaping death and pro
longing life. Afraid of the air being too hot or too cold, or the wind
too dry or too damp, or the weather not just the temperature to suit
their health, they were writing to each other from different rooms.
Voiture, on his part, wrote to Mme. de Sabl6 from a house where a
person was sick : " I fear to frighten you too much; know then that I
who write you do not write you, and that I have sent this letter
twenty miles from here to be copied by a man whom I have never
seen." (CEuvres de Voiture, vol. i. p. 29, Letter 14.)

f Letter cited by Gobillon, p. 37.

88 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

the humble girls who enrolled themselves for the
service of the poor was decreed the honor of pre
ceding her sisters to heaven. The harbinger of
the work, she deserved to be its first fruit and its
patron. Ut nuntia operis ascenderet, et primitice et
numen* Her death was as simple as her life had
been. For one year Marguerite Naseau had de
voted herself to the sick in the parishes of Saint
Sauveur, Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs and Saint Be-
noit,f where every one loved her because everything
about her was lovable. One day she met a poor
woman sick of the plague, took her home and cured
her sickness. Immediately after, without anxiety, for
she knew that God had called her, she bade adieu
to her companions and went to the hospital of St.
Louis, where she died towards the end of February
1631.

Mile. Le Gras felt this loss keenly, and the Saint
who wished to send her away as soon as he learned
of Marguerite s illness now sent her to visit the Con
fraternities in the neighborhood of Senlis. Verneuil-
sur-Oise, where she visited the house of a poor baker
named Lacaille, was her first stopping-place. From
there she went to Pont-Sainte-Maxence, where she
tells us she lodged at the Sign of the Fleur-de-Lis ;
to Gournay, where the Confraternity women were
coarser than elsewhere ; to Neufville-le-Roy, and for

* Epitaph composed by Lacordaire on Brother Requedat, his first
Companion.

f Conference de Saint Vincent du Janvier 22, 1645.

Visits to the Provincial Confraternities. 89

the second time to Bulle. At all these places she
took exact account of the care bestowed on the sick
by the members of the Confraternity, of their punc
tuality in attending their reunions and monthly Com
munions, of their intercourse with one another and
with the people ; and everywhere she left the rule in
full vigor. She also examined minutely the accounts
of offerings received at the houses, and the employ
ment of reserve funds which were devoted in
some places to the purchase of land, elsewhere to
that of sheep the clothing and bedding lent to the
poor; lastly, the registry kept of the names of those
who left, and the reasons for their discharge. This we
learn from notes left by her at the time of her visit.

The duties of Holy Week, 1631, recalled her to
Paris, full of good works, after labors that God had
blessed.* Her rest was of short duration, however,
for in the first week of May we find her again at
Villepreux, and at the end of the same month at Mon-
treuil, in spite of the uncertain state of her health
and her frequent attacks of illness not of long dura
tion fortunately. St. Vincent said, " I knew she was
well before I knew she had been sick." " May God
strengthen you in such a way that it may be said of
you, Mulierem fort em quis inveniet. You under
stand this Latin, so I shall not explain." In Septem
ber she set out again for Brie and Champagne, with

* Letter of St. Vincent, April n, 1631.

QO Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Mile. Dufresne and a country girl, to assist in the
care of the sick and poor. St. Vincent laid out her
route this time also, so that it would not coincide
with that of the Mission Fathers, then engaged in the
provinces, but he judged it no longer necessary to
give her written instructions for the road. " The
Spirit of our Lord will be her rule and director." *
He confined himself to letters of introduction to the
parish priests, for fear she might meet with ob
stacles from them. This danger was not encoun
tered, however, for the lord of Gondy, seeing
the great good she accomplished at Villepreux and
Montmirail,f heartily desired this new journey into
his estates, and went thither himself to receive her.
" He wrote me," said the Saint, "the affection with
which he received you." All was going on well at
first. Young girls, encouraged to that life by their
priests, came in crowds to be instructed by Mile. Le
Gras, and for two months she went through the
country, establishing schools and visiting the Confra
ternities of Charity ; when, all at once, the bishop of
Chalons,J in whose diocese she was travelling, be
came alarmed at the unusual practices, and demanded
an account. "If Mgr. de Chalons wishes it and he is
near/ wrote Vincent, "you would do well to see
him and tell him quite simply what you are doing.
Offer to retrench as much as he wants, or to leave it

* Letter, Sept. 1631. f Letter to the cure of Bergier, 1631.

\ Henri Clausse de Fleuri, bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne, 1624-1640,
whom St. Vincent called a holy person.

Return to Paris. 91

altogether if not agreeable to him ; such is the spirit
of God."*

The bishop, whose good intentions are beyond all
doubt, could not understand the advantage of this
new form of charity; and Mile. Le Gras was obliged
to return to Paris. The Saint congratulated her on
this trial. " How happy you are," we read in his
letter, " to be obliged, like the Son of God, to flee from
a province where you were doing no harm, thank
God!" f And, fearing that his daughter might impute
to herself a defeat impossible to avoid, he adds: " I
beg you not to imagine that this was your fault ; no,
it was not, but a pure dispensation of God for His
glory and the greater good of your soul. The most
elevating trait in the life of St. Louis is the tranquil
lity with which he returns from the Holy Land with
out having succeeded in his undertaking; and per
haps you will never meet with an occurrence redound
ing more to the glory of God than this one." " Our
Saviour," he writes on another occasion, " will re
ceive more glory from your submission than from
all the good you could have done. One diamond is
worth more than a mountain of stone : and one act of
submission is more valuable than any number of good
works." It was not without reason that St. Vincent
insisted so much on this point, his object being to
counteract a tendency of Mademoiselle to fret and ac
cuse herself of not being faithful to interior grace in

* Letter 33.

f Letter addressed to Mile. Le Gras at Mesnil, Oct. 31, 1631,

92 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

the discharge of exterior duties. Endowed with a
clear, strong mind, a calm and correct judgment,
ready to act as to suffer, her humility took alarm, and
her first impulse was to attribute any want of success
in the works of the Confraternity to her faults.
Hence, for her, St. Vincent said, such vain appre
hensions were more a hindrance than a benefit to her
salvation, and he sought to dissipate them by recom
mending the holy joy which produces confidence in
God. " Honor the holy cheerfulness of our Lord and
His Blessed Mother." * " Be cheerful above every
thing," he often wrote. " Leave aside that fear (which
appears to me somewhat servile) to those whom
God has not gifted as He has you ; despise those
thoughts which seem to weaken the faith God has
given you ; despise still more their author, who has
no power over you but what you choose to give him :
but banish the idea that you have ever given him
any power. Your tears and sorrow are so many
proofs of what I say; be, then, in.peace."f

This disposition of Louise to exaggerate her obli
gations was especially manifest when there was
question of her son. He was pursuing his studies in
a safe place not far from her ; nevertheless his moral
and physical culture gave her .so much anxiety that
St. Vincent obliged her to moderate it. This was
the " only side of her that remained a woman; "J and
for this she was more to be praised than blamed,

* Letter 52. f Letter 37. \ Letter 71.

Maternal Cares. 93

when we remember that she was still in the world and
a widow, whose first duty was the education of her
only son. Always ready, nevertheless, to banish the
least imperfection from a soul whose exquisite purity
he was one day to proclaim, St. Vincent wrote to
her: " What must I say of this too great tenderness?
Certainly it appears to me that you ought to labor to
rid yourself of it. It only troubles your mind, and
deprives you of the peace our Lord desires to find in
your heart. God wills you to be occupied, not ex
clusively, but sweetly, and gives you as your model
the worthy Mother de Chantal. May He give you
a share in the generosity He granted to that holy
soul in like circumstances!" Knowing, also, that
" never was mother more motherly" than she was,
St. Vincent was eager to send her news of her son
when she was absent ; and this he did in such minute
detail that we might be tempted to say of him that
never was father more watchful and tender than he.
" This will serve to assure you that your son is quite
well." " Be not uneasy; we take good care of him."
" I shall see him. But be in peace, I beg you ; he is
under the special protection of our Lord and His
Blessed Mother, on account of the gifts and offerings
you have made for him. . . His mind seems to expand
more and more. . . he is cheerful and very good, edify
ing every one. . . If it continues, you will have reason
to praise God and hope to be consoled in him." f We

* Letter 80.

f Letters of Oct. 22, 1630; Sept. 2-17, Oct. 17, 1631.

94 Life of Mile. Le Gras,

might multiply quotations ; but we shall never find
her maternal affection making her recoil from duty
or danger. Hence there was nothing selfish in it ;
and if it was an occasion of long and bitter sufferings
to her poor heart, it was because sorrow and love
are never long separated here below.

CHAPTER VI.

16321634.

Fortunes and Disgrace of the Uncles of Louise The Marshal de
Marillac dies on the Scaffold, and the Chancellor in Prison Mile
Le Gras does not allow herself to be cast down by these Afflictions,
but courageously pursues the Path of Good Works She receives at
her House the first Daughters of Charity Her Vow to consecrate
herself with them First Conference by St. Vincent de Paul.

[IVINE PROVIDENCE, in taking entire
possession of Louise, had destroyed none of
her affection. Her heart was one of those
which acquired without losing; and if the
poor found a privileged circle around her, her own
family remained as dear to her as ever. The honors
acquired by M. Michel de Marillac had not elated
her, earthly greatness had no attraction for her ; and
we would not remark it here, were there question of
court favor or military distinction only ; but glory
gave place to trial, and Louise, more than any one
else, was to feel the reaction in the persecution of
her uncles. The part she took in their afflictions
obliges us to glance at a few points of a history
whose most interesting details have never been pub
lished, and which nevertheless abounds in hard
lessons.

The two living representatives of the Marillac fam
ily whose destiny and relationship so often brought

g6 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

them together were at first raised to the highest dig
nities through the protection of the Queen-Mother,
to whom one of them was related by marriage. The
elder, Michel, appointed Superintendent of Finance
in 1624, became Keeper of the Seals two years after
wards ; but his great soul was not in the least per
turbed by the fascination of this office. " I have a
great mind to leave my commission on the table to
be reverenced," he said, " for it is to it, and not to me,
that all this honor is paid."

Louis XIII., on the contrary, would wish to have
had his council made up of Marillacs, and took pleas
ure in repeating : " This is between us for life and
death ; if he were in the Indies, I would send for him."
Shortly after he brought him to the siege of La
Rochelle, where Louis de Marillac, the field-marshal,
was directing the works of the fortification. The
operation was tedious, and, notwithstanding the strict
discipline of the soldiers, the perseverance of the
leaders appeared feeble before the resistance of the
besieged. Michel, convinced more than any one
else of the necessity of conquering, used all the
means furnished by his position and intelligence
to keep up their spirits, while in secret he sought the
assistance of Heaven ; making a vow, as was known
afterwards, to communicate every day until the
place surrendered, and to found in perpetuity three
Masses every month in the chapel of the Carmelites
in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. After having the
trouble, he had the honor ; for when the inhabitants

Michel de Mar iliac. 97

came, not to throw themselves, as the Keeper of the
Seals said, but to fall, in spite of themselves, at the
king s feet, it was he who read the written decree of the
conquest, to which Louis de Marillac signed his name,
the king not wishing to give his signature in a con
vention of his subjects. The year following the two
brothers met again with Louis XIII. in Languedoc,
the one endeavoring to convert the Huguenots by
peaceful means, the other to check their revolt by
force of arms. At last the capture of Privas, in May
1629, gained for Louis the baton of Marshal of
France. The zenith of glory was now reached by
this family with whom everything had prospered
hitherto ; but fidelity to the Queen Mother was soon
to bring about its irretrievable ruin.

The dissension between the Cardinal and Marie de
Medicis, which had been existing for some time,
was every day becoming more marked, and Louis
XIII. falling sick at Lyons, the Queen solicited
and obtained from him the promise to banish his
too-powerful minister. Some weeks after she
called on him to fulfil his promise, and proposed
Michel and Louis de Marillac as prime-ministers.
We need not repeat the events which followed, nor
their well-known result, as they are matter of his
tory. November 11, 1630, at the conclusion of a
stormy scene, the king left abruptly for Versailles,
and the Keeper of the Seals followed in the same di
rection. The Court believed that the Cardinal was
lost; but while they were hastening to the palace at

98 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Luxembourg, where Marie de Medicis was already
rejoicing in victory, Richelieu rejoined the king, and
regained a mastery over him which he ever after
ward held. The Luxembourg was at once deserted,
and the French, ever ready to mock at want of suc
cess, called that day the " Day of Dupes."

But dupes alone would not suffice for that day it
must also have its victim. At a short distance
from Versailles, in the chateau Glatigny, M. de Ma-
rillac calmly awaited the disgrace he had predicted
when he left Paris, adding to his prediction of this
downfall : " I did nothing to obtain the seals ; I shall
do nothing to keep them." He had written to the
king, reminding him of, and renewing, his former
request to be released from the charge, and, with
out a fear for his future, was hearing the Mass
celebrated by his almoner, when, at these words
of the Epistle, " Communicantes Christi passionibus
gaudete", " If you partake of the sufferings of Christ,
rejoice * when the door opened and the Lord of
Ville-aux-Clercs, secretary to his Majesty, entered and
made a sign that he wished to speak with M. de Maril-
lac. After the Mass, the royal emissary politely in
formed M. de Marillac that he was commissioned to
demand the seals, and to inform him that an officer of
the body-guard was waiting with eight archers to
conduct him to a place named by the king, signifying
to him at the same time to dismiss his attendants and

* I Peter, iv. 13.

Michel de Mar iliac. 99

take a carriage which was ready to convey him to his
unknown destination. The carriage drove off, and
continued on the road all day until evening without
stopping. The prisoner, calm and as if relieved of
a great burden, chatted gayly with the companions
of his journey, the many objects which they passed
on the road suggesting to him amusing or edifying
stories which he related, and making his almoner
catechise the archers. He was taken in this way to
Evreux, Lisieux, Caen, and then back to Lisieux,
where he remained for six weeks in solitary confine
ment, so absolute that even the butter-pots of the
merchants passing through the place were examined
to make sure that no letters were written or sent ;
and when he attended Mass, it was with an escort of
armed carbineers, as if he were a great criminal.
The people declared it a shame to see a good old
man treated in that way ; but he replied that " his duty
to God was to accept peacefully and tranquilly every
thing that might happen to him."

This serenity never forsook him ; and when permit
ted to correspond with his family, he wrote : " I wish I
could obtain for you a share of the graces that God
has sent me in this affliction ; they are very great ; if
you knew them, you would have more trouble to mod
erate your joy than you now have to control your sor
row." And a short time after : " I am so well satisfied
with everything, without exception, that has hap
pened, that I can never repeat often enough, I wish
all my friends could know my happiness/ " And final-

ioo Life of Mile. Le Gras.

ly alluding to the sweetness which God lavished on
him daily he wrote: " A little glimpse of the de
lights of heaven is more than sufficient to help us
not only to bear patiently all the afflictions of this
life, but to make us forget them altogether."

His enemies could not read the depths of that
great soul like his friends ; yet what pretext for
calumny could they find in the life of M. de Marillac?
Richelieu himself gives credit to his strict integ
rity, inflexible courage, purity of life and manners ;
and he confesses to Father Joseph, his confidant, that
he would willingly sacrifice an arm to recover a friend
ship of such use to him in affairs of state.* He was
a sagef and a Saint in the world which heaped
honors upon him without his solicitation or attention
to them. In the administration of state affairs he
remained poor, faithful to a vow never to become
rich even justly and lawfully ; but he gave away al
most all that he possessed^ Hence Conde applied to
him with truth these words of Scripture : " Innocent
in hands and clean of heart." His friends amused
themselves by applying to him his own expression

*Lefevre de Lezeau, " Histoire de Michel de Marillac." (Bibl.
Sainte-Genevieve, MSS.) From this manuscript we have taken the
greater part of the details of circumstances preceding and following
the captivity and death of M. de Marillac. Most of them are un
published.

f M. 1 Abbe Houssaye," Le Cardinal de Berulle et les Carmelites."

f See his epitaph, composed by Mother Madeleine of St. Joseph.
He left scarcely enough to defray his funeral expenses,

Ps. xxiii. 4.

Marshal de Mar iliac. 101

in reference to the disgrace of a celebrated religious :
" He will fee^l it no more than the swan coming from
the water with his feathers scarcely damp."

But if there were no pretext for attacking Michel de
Marillac, we must not forget that he was brother to
the Marshal, Louis de Marillac, who was then in Pied
mont sharing the command of the French army with
the Marshals Force and Schomberg, and was suspec
ted of taking part in the plots which were forming
against the Ministry. An order was sent, in conse
quence, from the king to Schomberg to arrest his col
league and send him under a strong guard to France.
The three Marshals lived together in Foglizzo, where
the king s mandate found them. Each Marshal took
his turn to command. This day it happened that
Marillac was on duty, which circumstance prevented
the king s letter from being opened in his presence,
as there was no suspicion of its contents following
so closely, as it did, on the compliments* addressed
by the king to Louis de Marillac on account of his
military exploits. The troops who had followed him
from the heart of Champagne, and whose officers
were all devoted to him, comprised more than half the
entire army ; therefore the greatest caution was nec
essary in executing the king s order. The Marshal

*One day, hearing that the Spaniards were to attack a certain
place, he gave them to understand that he would remain where he
was for twenty-four hours; at the end of that time he wrote in the
registry of the neighboring city that the French had waited all day
for the enemy.

102 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

made no resistance, however, and nobly protested
his fidelity to the Queen-Mother, without hiding
the fact that this was the cause of his misfortune.*
After fifteen days confinement in his own apart
ments he was brought back to his old place of com
mand and imprisoned in Sainte-Menehould. From
there he was conducted to Verdun, and tried for
misdemeanors and depredations committed by him
when general of the army in Champagne.

Could his conduct be called in question ? While serv
ing the king with loyalty had he profited of the occa
sion to reap pecuniary advantage ? Had he, as was said,
spared the charges on certain villages, and then re
ceived a tribute from them for so doing? By all-
accounts such things were done so frequently as to
be almost tolerated ; but to his last breath he denied
it, and we can scarcely imagine that the Governor of
Champagne would have been placed at the head of
the army in Piedmont had his conduct been public
ly scandalous.

Much more evident than his shortcomings was
the hatred which pursued him and which set aside
every form of justice. Twice the Marshal declined
the services of the extraordinary commission ap
pointed by the king, and begged to be brought before
his constitutional judges ; twice the Parliament of
Paris granted his appeal to its jurisdiction ; but the
king deposed the Attorney-General, Mole, who made
the decision, and annulled the decree.

* Bazin, " Histoire de Louis XIII."

Marshal de Mar iliac. 103

To these violent measures was joined unaccus
tomed rigor, and several times, by the king s ad
vice, the accused was refused the right to justify
himself. His niece and grand-nephews were ordered
to leave Paris,* where his papers were being exam
ined, and Madame de Marillac, relative of the Queen-
Motherf as we have said, was forbidden to intercede
in behalf of her husband a proceeding never known
before, the Marshal remarked, not even in the crime
of treason. The Cardinal refused an audience to the
unfortunate lady, and on leaving his palace she was
arrested by the archers and conducted outside of
Paris. Losing all her strength with the loss of her
hopes, she fell sick in the village of Roule, near the
capital. " The good lady of the Marshal is very
sick ; let us offer her sorrow to God ; would she not
be very happy to leave this world of misery ?" Thus
wrote St. Vincent J to Mile. Le Gras, then at Mont-
mirail, in the province of Champagne, the theatre of
such stirring events. Four days after, on the i/th
of September, he told her the news he had led her
to expect : " Madame la Marechale is gone to receive
in heaven the recompense of her labors ;" and fore
seeing what this separation would cost the heart of
Louise, he justifies her sorrow in advance by the

* March 6, 1631.

f Catherine, a daughter of Cosme de Medicis and aunt of the
queen, married M. de Marillac December 20, 1607.
J Letter dated Sept. 13, 1631.
Letter 34.

104 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

most sublime example : " Why should you not weep ?
The Son of God wept for Lazarus."

A letter found among the papers of Mile. Le Gras
shows the affectionate nature of their intercourse, and
gives us to understand the sorrow with which this
event must have overwhelmed her.* Alas ! the
news awaiting her in Paris was not such as
would dry her tears. The commission at Verdun
being too slow, another was appointed, many of
whose members were known to be the enemies of the
Marshal. They were to meet this time at Pontoise ;
but, under pretext that the city was subject to mili
tary jurisdiction, the tribunal was transferred to
Ruel, in the house, and one might say in the hands,
of the Cardinal himself. The judges, who pretended
not to be free at Pontoise, were very accommodating
here. In four sittings they heard the explanations
of the accused. When every incident had been
exhaustively discussed, he was declared guilty by
unanimous consent ; but when the penalty came up
for decision, there was dissension among the mem
bers. Of the twenty-four composing the commis
sion, a majority of one voice pronounced the penalty
of death.

What avail were the friends of M. de Marillac

* This letter on the subject of a good work ends thus: " Do me al
ways the favor to love me as I love you, and beg God to console me
in the afflictions I shall meet with if this war breaks out. I wish you
a happy New Year, and am,

" In affection, yours, DE MEDICIS."

Marshal de Marillac. 105

in opposition to the implacable will which directed
every circumstance in the details of this cruel
affair? Anne d Attichy, his niece, was related
to the Cardinal through Madame Combalet, and,
like her, was a maid of honor to the Queen-Mother;
but the Cardinal would not admit of family inter
vention in political affairs. His other friends vainly
solicited mercy for the condemned ; they were re
ferred to the king-, who was inflexible. The reason
of this severity was said to be the menacing tone
assumed by the Queen-Mother in favor of one of her
most devoted servants.

Two days after the Marshal was escorted from
Ruel to the Hotel de Ville in Paris, and there told
his fate. The " Chambre de Deuil" was assigned
him, with two Capuchins, and two Feuillans, to
prepare him for death. He was then conducted
to the scaffold, which had been erected in the Place
de Greve. It was six feet high. After half an hour
given him for prayer, the Master of the Rolls read
aloud the sentence. At the words " embezzling,"
" extortion," Marillac exclaimed in a loud voice,
" It is false !" And when he heard that the sum of
one hundred thousand crowns was to be paid from
his estate as restitution, he added, "My estate is
worth nothing."* The people were deeply moved

* It is said that when Conde saw the miserable half-built country
house which was made a pretext for the destruction of the Marshal, he
exclaimed, "There is not enough in that to excuse the whipping of
a page."

io6 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

at the sight of this old warrior with his hands mana
cled. The captain of the watch could not forbear
to express his indignation and sympathy ; but Maril-
lac answered him, " Grieve not for me, sir, but for
the king." At length the executioner begged par
don for the part he was obliged to take in the
tragedy, and with one stroke of the huge sword
struck off the head of Louis de Marillac. A carriage
draped in mourning was stationed at the foot of the
scaffold to receive his body, which was conveyed to
the house of Mme. de Marillac, his sister-in-law, in
the Rue Chapon, where the members of his family
were assembled. " With sorrow and sighs," says an
author of the time,* "they bore him to a large hall
in which a beautiful chapel had been prepared to
receive him. Amid this sorrow-stricken group
Mile. Le Gras found her place. Her duty needed
all her tact on this occasion, for many heart-wounds
were there to be healed, and many fierce resentments
to be overcome by charity.f She communicated

"Recit veritable de tout ce qui s est passe a la mort de Mgr. le
Marechal de Marillac. " The body of the Marshal was in terred beside
that of his wife in the church of the Feuillans, in the Rue Sainte-
Honore. His bust, with this inscription, marks the place: " Sorte
funesta clarus."

f Mme. de Combalet having sent to inquire for Mile. d Attichy, and
expressing regret at not seeing her, the latter replied that she did not
wish to meet the niece of her uncle s murderer. She declared her
eternal hatred to the Cardinal. In 1637 she became Countess of
Maure by her marriage with Henri, brother of the Duke de Morte-
mart. She did all she could, also her husband, for the restoration

Michel de Mar iliac. 107

all her sad news to St. Vincent de Paul. The
greatest consolation the Saint could offer her was
taken from the Christian sentiments of the Marshal.
He had honored the sufferings of the Son of God
by uniting thereto his own. Not doubting his
salvation, he adds, let us not pity him. . . . What
matter to us how our relatives go to God, if they
only go to Him ? " *

But Louise was not at the end of her sufferings, and
all her anxiety now was for the former Keeper of the
Seals, her favorite uncle. The way by which he was
going to God was that of captivity. His confinement
had become more strict since the escape of Marie de
Medicis. He was brought from Lisieux to Chateau-
dun, where his daughter-in-law, exiled from Paris,
joined him. He divided between prayer and labor
a life in which no bitter memories,f no regrets, found
place. He felt himself at the port of that blessed
liberty to which he had never ceased to aspire, and
his every thought was of heaven. He compiled a
new edition of " The Imitation of Christ," J a trans-

of the Marshal. (" Mme. laComtesse de Maure, saVie et sa Corre-
spondance," par Ed. de Barthelemy. Paris, 1863.)

* Letter xliv.

f Never did he permit a word to be spoken in his presence against
the Cardinal de Richelieu, nor against the judges who had condemned
his brother.

J This edition appeared in 1631. The frontispiece of it was a pic
ture of M. de Marillac receiving Holy Communion in a chapel,
probably that of the Countess of Dunois at Chateaudun. He appears
between two persons, one of whom is believed to represent his

io8 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

lation of the Psalms and the Book of Job, while at
the same time he was composing a Treatise on
Eternal Life. He was, moreover, occupied with
the beatification of Mother Marie of the Incarna
tion, having petitioned the Holy See for this pro
cess to be commenced when, as Keeper of the
Seals, he was in authority. These were, as he wrote
to his friend and biographer, Lefevre, his affairs
of state state affairs truly important and glorious,
treating of eternal crowns and thrones, and not like
the petty trifles, quarrels, and dissensions of this
lower world.

Louise had no means to follow the promptings of
her heart which urged her to visit and console her
uncle, being without a friend at court except the
persons now in disgrace, such as Mile. d Attichy and
Nicolas Le Gras, who had succeeded Antoine in the
office of secretary to the Queen-Mother. We have
an intimation of her project in regard to her uncle
in a letter from St. Vincent, in which he approves
without mentioning her design. This letter corre
sponds in date with a refusal of the jailors of Chateau-
dun to admit a lady from Paris. All that remained
for Louise was to suffer and pray. She went to the
Hotel-Dieu, where she surpassed herself in attend-

brother, the Marshal. The other is a lady, and can be none else than
the sharer of his captivity, Mme. de Marillac, his daughter-in-law.
There is no authority for supposing, as some do, that the artist
wished to represent Mile. Le Gras.

Death of Michel de Marillac. 109

ing the sick,* and then to the great convent in the
Rue St. Jacques, where Mother Madeleine had the
Blessed Sacrament exposed for sixty days and as
many nights for this benefactress of her community.
Not less devoted than Louise to M. de Marillac, this
holy prioress used every effort to encourage and
support him. She wrote to him frequently, and had
persons to intercede in his behalf with Richelieu,
that the severe rigor of his captivity might be miti
gated. Alas ! all she obtained was that, after death,
his body might be secretly conveyed from Chateau-
dun to Carmel, and a tomb, with any inscription she
pleased, erected for him beside that of his son in
the chapel which he had founded in honor of St.
Joseph.

If the grief of Mile. Le Gras at the death of her
uncle could have been assuaged, it surely might
have been by the details of his death which Mme.
de Marillac hastened to send her. His end was at
once simple and sublime. He departed in the full
use of his faculties, and with a serenity of soul
worthy of a saint. When the physician told him that
his last hour had come, he exclaimed : " God be
praised ! You could tell me no better news. I am
ready ; and, since there is no time to lose, let us be
doing." Calmly then, and without the least eager
ness, as if preparing- for an ordinary journey, he
asked for a table and inkstand and a light. He read

* Letter of the Saint, June 1632.

no Life of Mile. Le Gras.

over his will, sent for his daughter-in-law, bade the
children, if they loved him, not to cry, and received
Extreme Unction, answering the prayers of the
Church himself. "Jam non sum ex hoc mundo" he
said to those around him, " Vado ad Patrem" " Yes,
my God, Thou callest me, and I come to Thee."
Still, he wished to labor for God s glory to his last
breath. Seated by the side of his bed, dressed, as
usual, in his little fur collar and violet-colored satin
cap, he took up his " Treatise on Eternal Life," and be
gan again his writing. After some time, he stopped and
said, without any apparent emotion, " My sight is
going ; I see double writing ;" but he resumed his
pen. At length, laying it aside, he said again, " I
can scarcely see scarcely distinguish your faces."
He thanked God for having heard his prayer in
leaving him his senses to the last ; and without move
ment, without agony, he died in a sitting posture,
praying to his last breath. This was between seven
and eight o clock on the morning of August 7, 1632.
Some hours after, while eager crowds were pressing
around and touching his body with objects of devo
tion, a great light appeared in the sky, as if a flaming
torch were carried slowly across the heavens
illuming the earth. Four daughters of St. Teresa,
distant from each other, saw this light at the same
time. One of the nuns said that it impressed her
with the idea that some great personage was leaving 1
this world. This religious was no other than Marie

The First Daughters of Charity. 1 1 1

of the Blessed Sacrament, daughter of M. de Ma-
rillac.*

In the midst of these cruel trials, and without any
neglect of duty on account of them, Mile. Le Gras
continued with admirable courage the lowly labors
which charity had induced her to undertake. Part
of the year had been spent in visiting the confrater
nities at a distance from Paris. She had visited in
succession Ville-neuve-Saint-Georgesf (where she
had heard of some carelessness in the service of the
sick), Limours, Saint-Denis, Crosne (a little village re
lated to Villepreux, as the port St. Victor is to Notre
Dame)4 Sometimes she travelled alone, and on horse
back when she could procure a horse ; at other times
she made use of Mme. Pollalion s carriage ; again, it
was with a new companion, Madame Goussault, whose
acquaintance we shall shortly make. She left school
teachers in several of the places which she visited ;
others, again, gave her an opportunity to recruit her
forces by furnishing her with humble laborious ser
vants of the poor. With the increase of numbers,
however, the defects of the organization were more
apparent. These young girls were often sent to the
parishes just after leaving their own villages, and with
little experience in nursing the sick ; deficient, also, in
other qualifications necessary for such duties. It is
true that they received a short training from Mile.
Le Gras ; but without much previous instruction in

* Lefevre, " Histoire de Michel de Marillac."

\ She was there in July, 1632. Letter 50. \ Letter 50.

H2 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

ordinary piety, with no superior to watch over their
conduct, and no common bond of union among- them
selves, nor other rule of direction than the words of
Mile. Le Gras or St. Vincent, and, finally, without any
engagement to protect them from their own incon
stancy, it was not surprising if they could not always
please the Ladies of Charity. Nevertheless the ladies
had to bear with them, since even with their assist
ance it was difficult to supply the numerous demands
for help. St. Vincent had for some time cherished
the thought of forming a kind of Novitiate, where
these young girls could learn the practice of a Chris
tian charitable life before being sent to nurse the sick
or to serve the poor ; and he mentioned it to Mile.
Le Gras, who immediately offered herself for the work.
Although secretly rejoicing in her good will to be
whatever Providence willed her to be, St. Vincent
at first desired her to wait, as he was always afraid
of anticipating the time marked by God. " Saul," he
said, " was looking for his asses when he found a
kingdom ; St. Louis, striving to conquer the Holy
Land, gained the kingdom of heaven ; and you, in
seeking to become the Servant of these poor girls, be
come the servant of the Lord." At length, in the
autumn of 1633, he decided to make the attempt, and
chose three or four from a number of aspirants. Mile.
Le Gras received them into her house on the eve of
St. Andrew s, Nov. 29. This little snow-ball, as he
called it, was not long increasing : other young girls

The First Daitghters of Charity. 1 1 3

and some widows presented themselves.* At the end
of a few months the house was a true Novitiate, where
the cross, as Louise said, formed the only cloister.

The will of God manifested itself in the success of
the enterprise, and the interior peace experienced by
Mile. Le Gras, her love for her duty increasing more
and more, seemed also the sign of her vocation. This
voice which cannot deceive was what St. Vincent
wished her to await ; hence he now permitted her
to consecrate herself entirely to their common labor
by an irrevocable vow, pronounced March 25, 1634^
She renewed at the same time her vow of chastity,
and made the resolution to communicate the 25th of
every month, to thank God for her vocation to a state
whose difficulties had not abated her courage a state
essentially perfect and which corresponded to the
attractions of her whole life. There were trials and
difficulties, however, which would have made a less
courageous soul recoil. To receive under her roof,

o

and to live with them from morning till night, persons
until then unknown to her, most of th-em from the
common classes of society, virtuous of course, but
without education, and often rude in their manners
and language this for a lady of rank, refinement,

* Widows were admitted when not encumbered by a family. The
names of Mme. Pelletier and Mme. Turgis often occur in St. Vincent s
letters at this time. Later on the latter is styled Sceur Turgis.

f This date has been religiously preserved by the community of the
Daughters of Charity. The 25th of March is fixed for renewal of

H4 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

and intelligence, who loved the poor above every
thing, but who had been accustomed from childhood
to refined society this, we say, was a sacrifice all the
more complete as it was unnoticed by those who were
its object. Many postulants presented themselves, as
we have said, but most of them left after a short time.
" I have often heard her say," wrote one of these
girls afterwards, " that it annoyed her very much to
look at so many strange faces;" yet this annoyance
was almost continual, as she believed herself obliged
to receive all who presented themselves with seeming
good will ; and to make room for them she renounced
the convenience of keeping her own maid, and was
attended in her household duties and around her
own person by one of the new-comers " by the least

stvlish," remarked the same writer. She shared her

j

room, and even went so far as to share her bed, with
one who was afflicted with a painful infirmity.* Her
apartment, like her revenue, was quite limited. It
may be seen to this day, for the house is still stand
ing which tradition points out as having been the
scene of these beginnings, and of which she occupied,
probably, but one story. A low door and dark hall
give entrance to this little house, with its two small win
dows in front: such is the Bethlehem of the Daugh
ters of Charity. f

* Letter of Sister Mathurine Guerin to Sister Marguerite Chetif.

f This house, situated in the street then known as Fosses-Saint-
Victor, but now called after Cardinal Lemoine, is No. 43, and is occu
pied as a stationer s store.

The First Conference by St. Vincent. 115

No positive rule was yet in practice amongst them ;
and as order is impossible to any association with
out a common rule, Louise was obliged to draw up
a sketch of the regulations to be observed by her
Daughters. St. Vincent was sick; therefore
could not consult him before commencing her task,
and he was glad of it. " God wills it," he said, "so
that I may not put my scythe into your harvest.
At the same time, when the affair was presented to
him, he thought it his duty to make some modifica
tions. He advanced the hour of rising and retiring,
ordained silence from evening prayers until after the
prayer of next day, and decided that communion
should be received on Sundays and feast days. As
soon as he felt better, he called the girls together
and explained what he expected from them; and
there, on the 3 ist of July, 1634, in the presence of Ml
Le Gras, Sister Marie, from Saint Sauveur parish,
Srs. Michel and Barbara, attached to St. Nicolas,
Sr. Marguerite, one of St. Paul s, and Sr. Jane,
-alone with her angel," in St. Benedict s, he inaugu
rated that admirable series of Conferences which,
after two centuries and a half, remain the most pre
cious treasure of the Daughters of Charity.
lected from memory by the Sisters, or often mad<
up from notes taken by Mile. Le Gras while St.
Vincent was speaking, they preserve an aroma of
simplicity the charm of which is unequalled.

In these Conferences we may hear St. Vincent speak
with all the freedom of a father in the midst of his

1 1 6 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

children, with the sweet dignity of a saint, surrounded
by souls he was shaping and directing. He proposes
questions; they respond : and the light of sublime
truth often shines through the artless expression of
their thoughts. The Father approves their responses
or comments on them, and makes use of them in
developing his sense of the subject under discus

sion.

The Saviour doubtless acted thus with His disciples:
and this thought was one presented to the mind of St.
Vincent at the first time of his speaking in this little
Coenaculum. " Divine Providence, my daughters," he
said to them, "has assembled you here that you
should honor the human life of our Lord Jesus Christ
on earth." He then showed that our Saviour was
amongst them in virtue of His promise to be with
those who were assembled in His name ; and with
those, above all, who united in spirit for the purpose
of serving Him. " You have not yet had any rule.
In this Divine Providence has treated you like the
chosen people, who, after the creation, were more
than a thousand years without any law. Our Saviour,
also, did the same to His primitive Church ; for while
He was on earth there was no written law, and it was
His Apostles after His death who collected His teach-
ing and ordinances. In the same way, I could not
hitherto resolve to have the rule of your house re
duced to writing. But while waiting until it pleased
the will of God for this to be done, behold how you
should pass the twenty-four hours composing your

The First Conference by St. Vincent. 117

day, then your week, your year, thus conducting you
to a blessed eternity."

He enumerated then, as they occurred to him, the
divers points to which he wished to call attention,
commencing by the principal action of the day.
First. " To rise at 4 o clock ; as often as their duties
of charity permitted them, to retire at 9, because
they must preserve themselves for the service of the
poor." In the morning to offer up all their thoughts,
words, and actions to God, with every movement of
their heart ; all the actions of the day drawing their
merit from this offering. " This is why the Devil
tries his utmost to turn our thoughts from God
when we awake."

Secondly prayer. " O my daughters," he ex
claimed, " this is the centre of devotion. God gives
us a deluge of good thoughts in prayer. Gather
carefully these graces and put them in practice, and
you will give joy to the heart of God. Do not
believe that poor girls, ignorant as you suppose
yourselves, should not pretend to meditation. Oh,
God is so good ! and among the proofs of His good
ness which He has givon you, remember that of
calling you to the exercise of charity. After that,
how could you think that He would refuse you the
grace necessary to pray ? O my daughters, such a
thought should never enter your mind. I was much
edified to-day in speaking to a poor girl, like you,
but who has become one of the greatest souls I know,
simply by her assiduity in prayer."

1 1 8 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Thirdly " Be careful to render an account of your
prayer afterwards; say simply to one another the
good thoughts God has given you."

Fourthly " Go every day to Mass ; but assist at
it with great devotion. What do you think you do
when you assist at Mass ? It is not only the priest
who offers the holy sacrifice, but all who assist at it
offer it also."

Fifthly " When you leave your prayer or Mass
for the service of the poor, you should know, my
daughters, that you lose nothing, for the service of
the poor brings you nearer to God. Be careful,
then, to give them all the help they need, especially
spiritual help. Bear with their humors, and never
be angry or speak harshly to them. Ah, they have
enough to bear without that. Think, on the contrary,
that you are their visible guardian angel, their father
and mother, and never contradict them, except in
what would be hurtful to grant; for then to yield to
them would be cruel. Weep with them, for God has
established you to be their consolation."

Sixthly " The time remaining after the service of
the sick should be well employed ; never remain idle.
Apply yourselves to learn to read, so as to be able
to instruct little girls in the places where you may
be employed. Ah! how do you know what Provi
dence may have in store for you ? Hold yourselves,
then, always reajdy to go wherever obedience may
call you, without imitating the sons of Zebedee, who
asked underhand for the places they desired, and
which, for their good, God would not grant."

The First Conference by St. Vincent. 1 19

After other advice on divers subjects, the Saint
returns to their fundamental virtue and continues:
" As obedience perfects all our works, it will be
necessary for you that one hold the place of Superior ;
sometimes it will be one, sometimes another; and
having chosen the one who is Superior for the month,
look on her as you would on the Blessed Virgin
Herself. I may here relate something concerning
myself. When God placed me in the house of Mme.
de Gondy, I proposed to regard her and obey her as
I would the Blessed Virgin, and God knows how
much benefit I derived from this practice. Always
honor the Ladies of Charity, and comport yourselves
in their presence with much respect. Honor also
the sick; look on them as your masters."

He then set forth the advantages which the
Daughters of Charity would derive from their man
ner of life. First, he said, " If any one in the world
can hope for paradise, it is you. Why? Because in
observing your manner of life you are sure of doing
the will of God. The second advantage is the com
mencement of a great good which may last forever.
Yes, my daughters, if you enter on the practice of
your rule- with the design of doing the holy will of
God, there is room to hope that your little com
munity will endure, increase, continue the same good
after your death, arid be the subject of increase for
your glory in heaven."

After having explained the different means they
should take to persevere, " Have courage, my daugh-

120 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

ters," the Saint exclaimed in concluding, "and con-
sider what mercy God has shown in choosing you
to be the first to establish this company. When
Solomon wanted to build a temple to God he used
precious stones for the foundation, to show that
what he intended to build was to be very perfect.
The goodness of God wishes to do you the same
favor you who are the foundation of this company;
namely, to make you eminent in virtue. I am sure
you would not wish to do wrong to those who will
come after you; and as trees bear fruit according to
their kind, we may suppose that those who follow
you will not pretend to greater virtue than you will
have given the example of by your practice, if it
please God to give His blessing to this commence
ment of good. Be then always the most virtuous."

All the Sisters here declared their willingness to
observe faithfully what had just been recommended,
and knelt to receive the benediction of their Father.
Vincent then resumed his discourse. " Twelve fisher
men Avere chosen as pillars of the Church : and five
or six village girls are the foundation of this company.
Oh, how different are the works of God from those
of men!" The work, though still imperfect, was now
begun and founded without the founders being
conscious that they were doing a great work; and
St. Vincent de Paul to the last hour of his life
declined the honor of having given it existence.
"Be not deceived, my daughters," he would say;
" God alone has created your company. We never

The First Conference by St. Vincent. 121

had the intention of forming it. Ah ! when the first
of you came to serve the poor in the parishes of
Paris, who would have thought of there ever being
Daughters of Charity? Indeed, my daughters, I
thought it not, nor your Sister Servant ; God alone
thought of it. He is then the author of your com
pany, since we can find no other." * The Saint was
right. God alone could see through the vista of
time the immense tree that should grow from this
grain of mustard-seed ; but if it be true that St. Vin
cent suspected not the greatness of his work, we
must own that it was his inspiration to commence it.
The last biographer of St. Jane de Chantal be
lieved and repeated that St. Vincent borrowed the
first idea of his institute from the foundress of the
Visitation, and that he was pleased to show in the
growing company the heritage of Mme. de Chantalf
and Francis de Sales, who had been obliged by the
timidity of the Archbishop of Lyons and the pressure
of public opinion to give their creation a different end
from what they had at first contemplated.

The fact is not so. The truth is, that visiting the poor,
a duty first consigned to the Visitation, was only a
secondary work for them, and so accessory that two
Sisters only were named each month to make the
visits; the turn of each Sister coming round not
oftener than once in the year: so that the community

* Conference, Jan. 6, 1642.

f M. Bougaud, " Histoire de Sainte de Chantal," v. ii., pp. 252,

253-

122 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

were employed only in the works of interior contem
plative life.*

* The question has already been treated elsewhere. The text of the
passage which is devoted to this subject is found in the authentic
edition of the Memoires of Mere de Chaugy, published by the
religious of the monastery at Annecy, and runs thus: "This article
[the visits of the sick] has given place in our time to a false interpre
tation of the thoughts of the founders of the Visitation. It has
been said they wished to form a kind of Congregation of Sisters of
Charity; but even the Constitutions of St. Francis de Sales ^rove that
the visits to the sick was a secondary work. This Congregation has
been erected that no great obstacle might hinder the weak and infirm
from being received, and in it aspire to the perfection of divine love."
This was his end: to gather into the feast of the King, to most
intimate union with God, faithful generous souls v/ith feeble bodies.
Hence Mother de Chaugy assures us: "The principal care and
dearest affection of our holy Mother was to ground her Daughters
well in the spirit of true interior life, to which everything else tended,
so that they sought only mortification, recollection, silence, and
retreat in God." This intention of Francis de Sales was understood
even by the public, as is proved by the memoirs of the time; and
P. Armand, a Jesuit, answering the Saint, who had written for his
opinion on the reunion of Mme. de Chantal and her first daughters,
wrote (as is seen in page 146): "Your company is raised up to
imitate the hidden, contemplative, benign life of Jesus. It will not
resort to works of charity, knowing that to visit the sick was one of
the accessory practices, and not one of the ends, of the Congregation.
We shall be more convinced of this if we remark that two Sisters
only were named to visit for a month, making it not each one s turn
more than once in the year, so that the community might be employed
in the exercises of interior contemplative life. There is then no
relationship established between the birth of the Visitation and Con
gregations founded for the education of youth, or the companies of
charity who are in daily contact with the poor of Jesus Christ."
("Ste. Jeanne-Franc,oise Fremyot, sa Vie et ses CEuvres," v. i., p. 159.)

The First Conference by St. Vincent. 123

" The testimony of the Founder himself is worth
all the others. The principal end in erecting the
congregation at Annecy," says St. Francis de Sales,*
was to furnish a retreat for the infirm and widows,.
As to visiting the sick, it was added rather to con
form to the devotion of those who had commenced
that work, and to the character of the place, than as
a principal end. Hence when Mgr. Marquemont
wished to make the sisters cloistered, the bishop of
Geneva consented, finding the intention of the con
gregation more easily accomplished under this new
form.f As to the name Visitation (in which some
have found an allusion to the visiting of sick), it was
chosen only because this was a hidden mystery, not
celebrated in the church like the others.^: However
charming the expression of such a thought may be,
we cannot (and especially since the latest publications)
represent to ourselves St. Vincent yielding all at
once, on the cessation of the plague (1628), to the
repeated entreaties of Mme. de Chantal and deciding
through her zeal " to realize her sublime inspiration"
of twenty years before.

The facts we have tried to relate show, on the con
trary, that St. Vincent had no plan mapped out in

We may add to this declaration that the text of Mother Chaugy, on
which is based the opinion we combat, is not to be found in the new
edition.

* Answer to Mgr. Marquemont; CEuvres completes de St. Francois
de Sales (ed. Migne), vol. vi. p. 1141.

flbid. flbid., vol. vii. p. 383.

! 24 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

advance; and we know, also, that when the idea
unfolded under the breath of God, it was stil. in
opposition to the manners and ideas of. the tirne. A
community of young girls destined to nurse the i
at their own houses, and having ordinarily no monas-
terv but the dwellings of the sick; their cell a hire.
room, their chapel the parish church, their enclo
sure the streets of the city or wards of the hospital ;
having no grate but the fear of God, no veil but holy
modesty*-this was an innovation, strange, bold, t.
the eyes of some rash, at a time when women c
secrated to God, hidden under a veil which enveloped
the whole body, were protected from the dangers ,o
the world by the walls of a monastery, and gratings,
which," as Bossuet says, " seem to threaten t

who approach. "t

This miracle is now a fact. Christians are no longer
surprised to meet in the street, in the garret of the
poor in infidel countries, or on the field of battle
the white cornette of the Daughters of St. Vincent.
May we not say that the world itself, understanding
nothing of penance or prayer, ignorant of the vocation
to a cloister, admires, while it persecutes, this humble
Daughter who heals its wounds, calms its sorrows,
Sits tears; and becoming mother without cea,
ing to be virgin, receives and brings up its chil,

* Rules, chap. i. 2.

t Bossuet, Sermon-, de Veture de Mile, de Bouillon.

t M. Bougand, " Histoire de Ste. de Chantal.

CHAPTER VII.

1634 1636.

The Rivals of Louise in Charity Mme. Goussault s Visit to the
Hotel-Dieu Mile. Le Gras removes with her Daughters to La
Chapelle.

| HE COURSE of our story brings us to a
new work, or rather a new branch of the
charity, in the prosperity of which Mile.
Le Gras was to be actively engaged, al
though it was not under her immediate direction.
Before relating the exterior circumstances in which
this work was commenced we must give expression to
a reflection suggested more than once by this narra
tive. Scarcely ever did St. Vincent de Paul take the
initiative in the works he was to accomplish. Docile
worker in the hands of the Master, penetrated with fear
lest he would compromise the work of God by human
activity, he reflected and studied a long time before
undertaking anything. Attentive to lose no inspira
tion, he was equally afraid of advancing the time or
going beyond the Divine Will. The thought that he
might push the affair too far made him, as he said,
"tremble with fright." Thus he rather waited for

* Letter to Mile. Le Gras.

126 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

indications from on high than tried to find them.
Hence it often happened that Christian women, before
becoming his co-laborers, were the Angels of God, by
their faith or charity, to show him what God willed.
Some of these were ladies of high rank, others of
obscure origin ; but the weakness of the instrument
only served better to show the skill of the artisan.
The devotion of one woman of whom we know only
the name, Mme. de la Chassaigne, gave occasion to
the establishment of the Confraternities of Charity ;
another more celebrated, Mme. de Gondy, took the
initiative soon after, and gave Vincent the means
necessary to found these confraternities ; and while
the President de Herse contributed powerfully by his
alms to establish retreats preparatory to orders, the
widow of a young magistrate was pondering over
the work \ve are about to describe.

Too interesting to be forgotten here, this lady is
all the more worthy of notice as she made the ac
quaintance of Mile. Le Gras precisely at this time,
either in the parlor of Saint Lazare or in the Hotel-
Dieu, where both used to visit the sick. Her name
was Genevieve Fayet. Her husband, President of
Exchequer, M. Goussault,* died 1631, leaving her
with five children. The biographers of St. Vincent
have preserved their memory. Rich and of remark-
ble beauty, she could still have looked forward to

*Antoine Goussault, Lord of Souvigny, Counsellor of the King
and his Councils, and President of the Office of Exchequer, baptized
at St. Gervais June 17, 1584. (Bibl. Nat. MSS., 1329.)

Mme. Goussault. 127

happy relations with the world ; but she renounced
it to devote herself generously to the poor, especially
the sick; and Collet confirms what we say, while he
testifies to her eminent charity.

Both ladies had remained unknown to the outside
world, and even their own estimate of their worth
was much below the truth ; which is plainly proved
by documents afterwards brought to light. The
assistance rendered to the Confraternity of Charity by
Mme. Goussault, as well in Paris as in the neighbor
ing country, soon revealed her virtue and rare intelli
gence for good. This was especially evident in the
visits made with Mile. Le Gras with whom Vincent
associated her. On one of these visits she wrote* to
St. Vincent from Angers, April 16, 1633, and her

*This precious document, without signature, was found in the
Library St. Genevieve amongst a voluminous collection of letters,
most of them addressed to P. Faure, reformer of the Abbey. It was
published 1854, in the Revue de V Anjou, and attributed to Mile. Le
Gras; reproduced as emanating from her by Maynard in his history
of St. Vincent de Paul. This opinion seems scarcely justified. We
cannot recognize in this letter the style or the habits of Mile. Le
Gras. She never travelled with lackeys or fermiers a cheval, and
never spoke to her servants on the way, for the good reason that she
never had any. Moreover, her writing was irregular and not so plain.
The writing in this is large, firm, and masterly, so to speak. Everything
inclines us to believe this the letter of Mme. Goussault. Moreover,
by happy chance a specimen of her writing more lengthy than this,
from the National Library, has been found in an autograph sent from
China to Paris to help the publication of St. Vincent s letters. An
examination and comparison of the two proves the writing of that
published in the Revue de V Anjou to be without doubt that of Mme.
Goussault.

128 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

letter gives us an insight into Mme. Goussault, who
is there portrayed in charming simplicity, relating
her thoughts and exercises while on her journey ; " the
prayer which she made with her companions, the chant
ing of litanies, of the Alleluia and other hymns, so
joyously that the lackey* who followed them on horse
back was quite charmed." In short, her prayer inter
mingled with sweet recreations; and works of zeal
might make us suppose her "another Mme.d Acarie."
At Angerville she teaches the sign of the cross to
little children, and to grown-up persons employed in
weaving bunting, whose ignorance of that sacred sign
moved her to pity. At Arthenay she taught cate
chism even inside the church. Arriving at Angers,
she is received with honor and, as she says herself,
treated like a grandee. The magistrates and chief
men of the place called on her, and for two days she
had no free time except the hour of Mass. After
wards she visited the prisons, set free the poor salt-
smugglers, and instructed the women and children of
the place, who appeared to her very much in want of
instruction. The enthusiasm enkindled by her is
indescribable. A priest who listened to her said he
would think himself happy to spend and finish his
life near her, were it only to listen to the words com
ing from her mouth ; and among hundreds who were
listening to her, one exclaimed, u It is plain that you
love the poor and are in the joy of your heart with

* Mme. de G. possessed a property near Bourgneuf , in Anjou.

Mme. Goussault and the Hotel-Dieu. 129

them. You are twice as beautiful when speaking- to
them!" This success astonishes her; she artlessly
seeks the cause, and finds it in the simplicity of her
manner. In short, she goes to the parishes, where she
makes no reform, and condescends to everything not
sinful even to play backgammon for an hour one
day.* However she managed, she so gained all hearts
that it was said " if she remained one year at Angers
she would convert the whole village." But the hum
ble woman, insensible to praise, thought only of the
poor, particularly the poor sick in the hospital. In
her conduct towards the sick we see the sentiments
expressed in her letter and the justification of our
opinion concerning it.

From Etrechy, her first halting-place, to Angers,
the term of her journey, her first care on arriving was
always to inform herself of the Hotel-Dieu, and to go
there whatever the distance from her stopping-place.
It seemed as if her only intention on the journey was
to visit the hospices of the province and study the
treatment of the poor at those places. A fact which
supports this supposition is that a few months after
her return she made a proposition to St. Vincent
which related to the sick of the Hotel-Dieu in Paris.

Mile. Le Gras had for some time been anxious to

* Her only remorse was refusing to have her picture taken as was
the custom of ladies in the city even, the little bourgeoises, whose
portraits were placed on the tombstones. "It is perhaps a false
humility not to wish to appear so vain, and there would be more
virtue in greater condescension."

130 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

ameliorate their condition, and had already made a
communication to St. Vincent on the subject ; but
this wish, common to several souls at that time, was
given a precise form by Mme. Goussault.

This was to extend to the sick of the Hotel-Dieu
the charity exercised towards the poor of the parishes.
This would occasion the expenditure of great alms.
The Hotel-Dieu, which had just been enlarged by a
hall to extend to the river,* received at that time
from a thousand to twelve hundred sick. From
twenty to twenty-five thousand persons passed
through it every year. What a field for charity!
Nevertheless St. Vincent, with his usual reserve,
excused himself. He did not wish, he said, to en
croach on a domain which was not his own ; neither
had he the power or authority to reform the abuses
which must have glided into that establishment.
Mme. Goussault, seeing that she obtained nothing
from Vincent, would not relinquish her design, but
went to the archbishop of Paris, whose authority
could remove all obstacles. This essay was more
fortunate ; Mgr. de Gondy was easily persuaded,
and sent to St. Vincent saying that he would be
most happy to see a society of ladies formed for the
express purpose of attending to the sick of the Hotel-
Dieu. In this advice from the prelate the Saint rec
ognized the will of God, and yielded the point.

He then permitted Mme. Goussault to assem-

* Piganiole de la Force, t. i. p. 401. This addition made twenty
halls in the Holel-Dieu.

Mme. Goussault and the Hdtel-Dicu. 1 3 1

ble in her house, Rue Roi-de-Sicile,* some pious
women whom he consented to preside over, and
whose names he has himself preserved to us. " The
assembly took place yesterday at Mme. Goussault s,"
wrote St. Vincent the following day to Mile. Le
Gras, who was not able to be present. " Mines, de
Villesavin,f de Bailleul^ du Mecq, Sainctot, and
Pollalion[ were present." The Saint commenced by
laying out the plan of the projected work. The prop
osition to visit the sick regularly was agreed on in
theory ; but as to the practical part, the attendance
was so small at this first meeting that nothing could
be decided upon. They resolved to pray and receive
Holy Communion that God would give them light,
to endeavor to make proselytes amongst their
friends, and agreed on the necessity of soliciting
forthwith the aid of Mile. Le Gras and her Daugh-

* Rue Roi-de-Sicile exists partly at present, and is between Rue
Rivoli and Rue Francs-Bourgeois.

f Mme. Villesavin, widow of Phelippeaux, Lord of Villesavin, was
long acquainted with Mile. Le Gras. This we find by a letter from
Mgr. Camus. She occupied two beautiful mansions on the Place Roy-
ale where she entertained the highest society. She was called, from
her ceremonious manner, the most humble servant of the human race.

\ Mme. de Bailleul, wife of the Superintendent of Finance of that
name.

Mme. de Sainctot, maiden name Dalibray, wife of the Treasurer
of France. She received in her house the Pascal family, and educa
ted with her own daughters the celebrated Jacqueline. Voiture dedi
cated to her his translation of " Roland furieux."

I St. Vincent and Mgr. Camus wrote always Poullalion instead
of Foliation. We have adopted the latter orthography, used formerly
by the author of her Life.

1 3 2 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

ters. They judged that four Sisters would be neces
sary, and St. Vincent notified Louise immediately,
adding, " Your work is growing ; strengthen yourself,
then, as much as you can."

On the following Monday the ladies met again.
This time their number was six,* among whom were
Mme. Seguier,f wife of the Chancellor, Mme. de
Traversay,J the good and saintly Mme. Fouquet,
and Mile. Le Gras. The visiting of the hospital had
been already decided upon. The question now was to
organize. Mme. Goussault was placed at the head
of the work. She would take no other title than Ser
vant.! Mile. Viole T was named as her assistant, and

* Recueil manuscrit de diverses pieces appartenant a la conduite et
direction des dames de la Charite de Paris. (Arch, de la Mission.)

t Elizabeth d Aligre, wife of Pierre Seguier, who was made Keeper
of the Seals in 16.33.

J Anne Petau, widow of M. Regnauld, Lord of Traversay, Coun
sellor in the Parliament of Paris. She lived in Rue Saint-Martin
with President Meliand, her brother. She founded, in 1635, the mon
astery of the Conception, Rue Saint-Honore, and was engaged with
the Daughters of the Cross after the death of their foundress, Mme. de
Villeneuve.

Marie Mauprou, mother of the celebrated Superintendent of Fi
nance; a heroine, who, on hearing of the disgrace of her son, exclaimed,
" Thank God! I asked God for the salvation of my son. This is the
way to it." Her five daughters entered the Visitation. Mme. Fou-
quet had taste and a special aptitude for tending the sick, and com
posed a collection of medical receipts.

The Superiors of the H6tel-Dieu, in their commencement, took
the name of Servant from the good Mme. Goussault. (Conference de
Saint Vincent aux Filles de la Charite, June 20, 1642.)

IT Mile. Viole busied herself in the work of the hospital, and filled

The Daughters of Charity at the H6tel-Dieu. 133

Mme. Pollalion, though busy with the foundation of
the Daughters of Providence in the village of Cha-
ronne, consented to take the office of secretary. St.
Vincent, who could not refuse the directorship, traced
out for them their rule of conduct.

His first recommendation was discretion in regard
to the religious already established in the house. The
situation was a delicate one. There were nearly
one hundred and thirty Augustinians who were very
regular ; and if their Superior, Mother of the Holy
Name, twenty years in charge, could not give each
sick person a bed, she had not been idle, for the
beds, food, and medicines were better than formerly.
Not to wound the just sensitiveness of Mother and
Daughters, St. Vincent invoked the assistance of
our Lord, the true Father of the poor, through the
intercession of the Blessed Virgin and St. Louis,
founder of the house ; he then advised the ladies to
present themselves to the religious and ask, as a favor,
to be allowed to assist them in serving the sick, also
to look upon them as the true mistresses of the house
and spouses of Jesus Christ.

As to the poor, whose consolation and instruction
is the end of the work, the ladies should treat them
with meekness and humility, and not make them sad
by any show of riches or luxury, but approach them
simply and modestly dressed. " In speaking to them

the office of assistant or treasurer until her death, April 4, 1678.
" How consoled and edified I am by that good young lady!" exclaimed
St. Vincent. She lived in Rue de la Harpe.

134 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

avoid appearing learned, and always have a little
book in your hand so as not to seem as if preaching."
(Little books of Christian virtue could be printed on
purpose.) "Always make use of such formulas as
I was taught . . . I was advised . . . I was taught
to make my confession this way/ etc. Man is so con
stituted that good done the body often opens the
way to the heart. This you must never forget."

Mme. Goussault made a new proposition on this
subject. She had remarked that the sick were
confined to two meals per day dinner and supper,
without anything between for want of having
nutriment adapted to their condition. She had re
marked this with regret, the more so as the senti
ment of Christian equality was strongly impressed
on her mind. She therefore suggested to hire a
room near the Hotel-Dieu in which the Daughters
of Charity could prepare a collation and make jel
lies and other delicacies for the sick. They could
accompany the ladies afterwards and help them to
distribute the good things. Every one agreed to
this proposal, and they separated, promising to act
without delay.

The plan was drawn up, and the work commenced
under the happiest auspices. Gained over by the
meek, deferential bearing of the ladies, the Augus-
tinian religious left them free to go through the apart
ments, and even seconded all their plans. Mile. Le
Gras was authorized by them to bring four of her
Daughters, Sisters Genevieve, Jacqueline, Germaine,

The Daughters of Charity at the Hotel-Dieu. 135

and Nicole. She labored herself at this new work
with so much zeal that St. Vincent again obliged
her to moderate. He wrote: " To be always at the
Hotel-Dieu is not expedient ; to go at times will be
sufficient. Do not fear to undertake too much in
doing what is presented to you ; but fear to under
take more than God will give you the means to ac
complish. I thank our Lord for the great grace of
generosity in His service which He has given to your
Daughters."

The generosity of these Daughters was but a reflec
tion from that of the ladies. This work, which St. Vin
cent considered the same as the charity in the par
ishes,* was not organized more than a month when the
society numbered from one hundred to one hun
dred and twenty members. Every afternoon, about
one o clock, a crowd of noble ladies, among them prin
cesses and duchesses, assembled at the Hotel-Dieu,
and after adoring the Blessed Sacrament, separated
in groups of four to go through the wards. Each one,
wearing a white apron and accompanied by a Sister of
Charity, went from bed to bed distributing jellies, bis
cuit, or broth; and afterward remained, as Mile. Le

" May it please God," he wrote to one of his missionaries, July 23,
1634 (M. Coudray in Rome), "that you obtain indulgences for the
Confreries of Charity, which by the grace of God do such wonders.
We have them established in several of our parishes in Paris, and
one is composed of one hundred or one hundred and twenty ladies of
rank, who come every day and help to nurse eight or nine hundred
sick, working in groups of four."

136 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Gras reported, sitting by the sick for hours (sometimes
at the risk of their life); talking to them, teaching them
to examine their conscience, to prepare for general
confession, with regret for the past and purpose of
amendment. This preparation complete, the ladies
called the chaplain to finish their work as, thanks to
the charity and liberality of the ladies, there were
chaplains attached to the hospital. Thus, in the
course of the first year, they prepared more than
seven hundred and sixty conversions Lutherans,
Calvinists, even Turks wounded in sea-fights. The
expense was great ; but Mile. Le Gras had opened a
source of revenue for them from the confectionery,
jellies, etc., made by the Daughters of Charity over
and above what they made for the sick and which
was sold in Paris for the benefit of the Hotel-Dieu.
Without official title, Mile. Le Gras was, we might
say, not only the mainspring of the work by the ser
vices of every kind which she rendered, but also a
type for imitation to her associates by the indefatiga
ble zeal with which she labored.

In calling on Louise to make a part of the com
pany for the Hotel-Dieu, Vincent only thought of
giving the benefit of her experience to the ladies,
who were, of course, only novices in the exercise
of charity ; but the helps he afforded them had
another result for herself not less beneficial, that
of putting her in relationship with ladies of high
rank, rich and influential, who could help her in
the provinces by establishing near their estates the

Christian Women of the i *]th Century. 137

first houses of the Daughters of Charity. It will
be shown afterward how greatly this concurred to
the support of the work; for the present we wish
to introduce, by some traits of character, the pious
phalanx of ladies around Mme. Goussault and Mile.
Le Gras. The political or literary ladies of the sev
enteenth century have had their biographers, often
their panegyrists ; how deplorable that the great
Christian women of this religious movement should
be, for the most part, ignored and no writer found
to draw their names from oblivion !

To mention only the group having the Hotel-
Dieu for centre. The ladies who composed it ex
tended their charity to nearly all the works of
St. Vincent de Paul. They founded with him the
General Hospital and Foundling Asylum. They
supported missions in France, Italy, the British
Isles, Poland, Germany, and beyond the seas. They
contributed to the redemption of captives in Bar-
bary, and bestowed large alms in provinces laid
waste by war Lorraine, Picardy, and Champagne.
Mile, le Gras, too modest to mention her own part
in this concert of devotion, has left us, in a few lines,
a picture of the good effected under her own obser
vation. She writes : " It is very evident in this cen
tury that Divine Providence makes use of our sex to
show that ours alone helps the people in affliction.
The Spirit of God who presides over the assemblies of
the ladies makes them serve the poor so charitably and
so munificently that Paris is an example and a sub-

138 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

ject of admiration for the whole kingdom. Not only
France, but almost the whole habitable world, has
reaped the fruit of their good works. Thanks to them
for countless souls who now enjoy the Beatific Vision
and honor God in heaven ! The ladies themselves
have entered on the road of sanctity, in recompense
for their charity. If all that they have done could
be enumerated, the truth of what I write would be
seen."

It would be a pleasure to follow up the traces of
each one ; but not wishing to overstep the natural
limits of our subject, we must confine ourselves to a
glance at those only who figure conspicuously.

The result of the first two meetings is known to the
reader. But to the ten ladies who founded the work
which still exists, viz: that of visiting the hospital,
almost a hundred others, had been added " whose
names," said St. Vincent, " God has inscribed in
the Book of Life." We shall first mention three
of the spiritual daughters of St. Francis de Sales,
who seemed to have imbibed some of his spirit.
The first of these was Charlotte de Ligny, widow
of the President de Herse, a woman of eminent piety
" incapable of recoil from any good work,"* dear as
his own soul to the bishop of Geneva. f She was

* Collet, "Vie de Saint Vincent de Paul," t. ii. p. 343.

f See a charming letter from St. Francis de Sales to the Presi-
dente de Herse, dated from Annecy, July 7, i6[6. La Presidente de
Herse lived in Rue Pavee. She survived St. Vincent and Mile. Le
Gras two years only.

Christian Women of t lie i^th Century. 139

the mainstay of the Confraternity at Saint-Sulpice,
and one of Mile. Le Gras dearest co-laborers.

Not less fervent in good works was Marie 1 Huil-
lier, widow of Claude de Villeneuve, Maitre des
requctes ordinaires de Vhdtel du rot. St. Francis de
Sales had introduced her to Mme. de Chantal as
"the most sincere and best heart he knew," and
her acquaintance with Mgr. Camus had made her
intimate for a long- time with Mile, le Gras. She
visited the poor at St. Paul s before she founded
the first house of the Daughters of the Cross. This
was at Vaugirard (August 4, 1641).

Not having a growing community to provide for
like Mme. de Villeneuve, Marie des Landes could
devote herself more to the work of the hospital
where she was one day to be Superioress. She was
the wife of Chretien de Lamoignon, President a
morticr for the Parliament of Paris. In the opinion
of St. Francis de Sales she was " one of the holi
est women of his time." He could speak of her
thus, as we read in his unpublished * works, because
she had been a long time under his direction. And
the author adds : " She assisted every day at all the
Offices, commencing the day by hearing matins at
four o clock in summer, and five o clock in winter."
One day when she fainted it was perceived that she
wore a hair-cloth, and an iron chain with points so
sharp that she was wounded in several places. Her

" Vie de Mile, de Lamoignon," par le P. d Orleans.

140 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

zeal for visiting the sick found an echo in the heart
of her two daughters, who had never known any
thing "of childhood but its docility, or of youth
but appearance and years." The older, Anne, mar
ried a master of supplies, M. de Nesmond ; the
younger never married, the better to devote herself
to works of mercy. The virtuous mother, whose
charity had given her the title of " Mere des Pau-
vres," f rejoiced to have a daughter who could assist
the poor with and after her. Their apartments were
always full of people, who were never refused. Money,
linen, clothing, seemed common property with the
family and the poor who were in need. It was not
rare for the family to have nothing to eat at meal
time; the mother and daughter had given it all away.
They made out as best they could ; and what is still
more wonderful is that neither father nor son ever
found fault, contenting themselves with some little
jest at the expense of those who were thus prodigal.
The blessed name of Mme. and Mile. Lamoignon will
often appear on these pages.

Perhaps the most illustrious among these generous
women walking with such zeal in the path of perfec
tion, and the one who most closely copied Mile. Le
Gras, was Madame de Combalet, better known in his
tory as the Duchess of Aiguillon. Being left a widow

* "Vie de Mile, de Lamoignon."

f When St. Vincent visited Mile, de Lamoignon, it was said
" There goes the Father of the poor to visit their Mother." She then
lived in Harley Court (now called Rue de Harlay).

Christian Women of the \*]th Century. 141

at the age of eighteen, she divided her time between
the Court and Carmel. She was obliged by her rank
and by the friendship of two queens to live at the
Court which she loved not, and would have gladly
buried herself in Carmel had not the authority of
Cardinal Richelieu, her uncle, closed its gates against
her. She often visited there, however" hastening
to it with the wings of the dove." ; Her sole occu
pation was to distribute her wealth between the mis
sions, the hospital, and the prisons.f When, toward
1636, the Confraternity of Charity was established
at Saint-Sulpice, she was one of the most active as
sociates of that parish, which counted several persons
of admirable generosity. We shall only name here
the Duchess of Liancourt, a long time the intimate
friend of Mile. Le Gras, and of whom we shall speak
more at length; the Countess of Lomenie de Brienne,^:
wife of the Secretary of State, who established the
Daughters of Charity at her house in Champagne;
and Mile, de L Etang, who founded a house for
orphans, and whom St. Vincent sent to Louise to
learn from her the difficult science of governing
souls.

* Flechier, " Oraison funebre de la Duchesse d Aiguillon."

f See, for details, " La Duchesse d Aiguillon," par. M. Bonneau-
Avenant. Paris: Didier. 1879.

\ Mme. de Brienne lived in Rue des Saints Peres.

To these illustrious ladies of the parish of Saint-Sulpice we shall
add, without too much detail, some others who seemed to have relations
less direct with Louise, but whose names will serve to show what were

142 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

If the ladies just mentioned assisted Mile. Le Gras
in her mission of providence, she in her turn had
given them back in spiritual charity what she had
received. This is an exchange quite common in the
lives of the saints. Not only did she exercise toward
them the silent apostleship of example, but she often
practised that of counsel in the retreats which seve
ral of the ladies made in her house and under her di
rection.

Very soon the little lodging in Rue St. Victor was

the resources of the Confraternity of Charity in this quarter. These
are:

First, the Princess of Conde, mother of the great Conde and of
Madame de Longueville, who by her charity had merited from the
Carmelites the title of foundress and the right to live in an apart
ment of the convent. After the death of her husband she followed a
very perfect rule of life drawn up for her by M. Olier, and left by her
will 10,000 livres for the construction of the new church of Saint-
Sulpice (1650).

Mme. de Rantzau, widow of the Marshal of that name, died
1666, in the convent of the Annunciates which she had founded at
Hildesheim. She had been a Lutheran and had studied her theology
from a Protestant standpoint. After zealous study she was convinced
of the truth of Catholicity, but resisted for two years; at length she
became a Catholic, converted her husband and a number of heretics.

Mme. Leschassier, devoted to the service of the sick; also her
daughter, who founded a home for orphans, Rue du Vieux Colom-
bier, in the house where the Novitiate of the Daughters of Charity was
established at the commencement of our century.

The Marchioness of Palaiseau, one of the ladies of the Hotel-Dieu,
who gave her bed, worth 20,000 livres, to make a canopy for the ex
position of the Blessed Sacrament at Saint-Sulpice. This she did in
expiation of a sacrilege committed in that church in 1648. The Baro
ness of Neuvillette, in the same spirit of reparation, condemned herself

Mile. Le Gras returns to Liancourt. 143

not large enough, and Louise, often called away to
the provinces, was obliged to be absent. In the
course of the year 1635 she went to Attichy, on the
invitation of her cousin, and to Beauvais,* where dif
ficulties had arisen ; the priests, wanting to rule the
Confraternity and the bishop, who wished to attach
to it the Rosary of the Dominicans, opposing it,
and the ladies, whose zeal had abated. She returned
at this time to Liancourt, which she had visited
several years before, and where the ladies offered
her a place for two Sisters f of Charity, whose duty

to cat only black bread and drink only water. She died in great re
nown for virtue, 1657.

Claude de Seve, widow of M. Tronson and mother of the future Su
perior of Saint-Sulpice, directed successively by Father Condren
whose letter to her on the dispositions for Holy Communion, dated
Aug. 5, 1630, is preserved to this day at Saint-Sulpice and M. Olier,
who, seeing her gifted with rare dispositions for virtue, took particular
care in her perfection. She founded, with Mme. de Saujon, a house
of retreats for ladies of the world.

Finally, the Marchioness de Fenelon, Catherine de Monbernon,
who died in the odor of sanctity, 1646. "Our dear daughter, Mme.
de Fenelon," wrote M. Olier, "is at present honored as a saint by
a wonderful concourse of persons who visit her corpse, so strong is
the impression which true piety makes on the heart."

We might name many more of these ladies.

*She stopped with a good charitable hostess, Mme. de Villegoublin,
whom Providence had brought to Beauvais to do good. (Lettre de
St. Vincent a Mile. Le Gras, 21 juillet 1635.)

f Jeanne de Schomberg, Duchesse de Liancourt, born 1600, died
1674, passed a great part of the year at Liancourt, which she had
founded and embellished with royal magnificence. She composed a
treatise for her granddaughter on the occasion of her marriage

144 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

would be to prepare medicine for the sick of the vil
lage and neighborhood, whom they were to visit
twice a week.

The Duchess of Liancourt, then in the full bloom
of youth, was a woman of rare virtue and intel
ligence. She professed for Louise an affection which
the latter reciprocated \vith all fervor, offering her
services in case of sickness " an offering which the
Duchess would never accept, being solicitous on
her part for the health of her friend." Later on she
received her into her house to make a retreat. A
day was to come when this holy friendship would be
forever destroyed. A stranger to the ideas of Port-
Royal, the Duchess nevertheless received the visits
of the scholars of that sect, and consented to hold a
controversial correspondence with them. This she
told to Mile. Le Gras. " They wanted to gain her,"
writes Mile. Le Gras to one of her Daughters, " and
they commenced by writing to her, and she showed me
her answer. It is incredible how she let herself be
caught ; she feared it so much. As for me, I praise
the goodness of God in keeping me out of the snare
in which I might have been caught from the great
sympathy there was between us."

which shows great elevation of thought. It was styled " Reglement
donne par un dame de haute qualiteaN., sa petite-fille." It was
printed for the first time in 1698, and republished in 1881 with a no
tice by the Marchioness de Forbin d Oppede. In the Archives of the
Mission is an affectionate letter from her to Mile. Le Gras, whom she
styles her "dear friend."

The Work of the Confraternity Increases 145

The Duchess yielded, and, like Eve, drew her hus
band after her. Their intercourse with Father Des-
mares, her frequent visits to Port-Royal-des-Champs,
where they constructed a hermitage, and the contro
versy they occasioned, raised a wall of separation,
little by little, between Louise and the lady of Lian-
court, who still preserved her friendly manner, but
studiously avoided all religious conversation. " I
have lost her friendship," said Louise, " but God be
praised ! How dangerous it is to wish to know more
than God has taught us !"

The absence of Mile. Le Gras did not .destroy the
little community growing up around her,-" which
Mme. Pollalion took care to watch over. Three
girls from Colombes, presented by Sister Jeanne
of St. Beunet s parish, three country girls from
Argenteuil, and a lace-maker from Liancourt, who
could, if need were, teach the sick women her trade,
had filled the void made in the little flock from
which one had gone away without giving any rea
son, and another had died in tfee exercise of that vir
tue in which no one can be lost charity. f

The labors of those who remained faithful daily
increased from all sides. Distant cities, Sedan for
instance, at the foot of the Ardennes, were petition
ing for Daughters, and in Paris the Confraternity was

* "Mme. Pollalion can sometimes see your Daughters," wrote St.
Vincent to Mile. Le Gras. (Letter 48.) "Mme Pollalion hopes to
remain at your house to-night." (Letter 49.)

f Letter 81.

146 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

established in several new parishes, such as St. Lau
rence, where Louise remained several days to ar
range matters, St. Germaine 1 Auxerrois, and St. Eti-
enne.* In some of the confraternities the ladies had
fallen off, and the charge of the poor weighed heavi
ly on the Daughters. Thus, Sister Marguerite f of
St. Paul, her burden becoming heavier and heavier,
asked for a reinforcement of companions.

But if it were evident that help was needed for
the growing proportions of the work, it was also
clear that a locality should be chosen better suited to
their purpose.

The little house which up to this time had shel
tered the family of Daughters was so scant that for
want of a separate room for the sick they were
obliged to hasten the burial of a Sister whose loss
they were mourning. Besides, being on the left bank
of the Seine, they were at a distance from the priory
of St. Lazarus, which had become, by a pious substitu
tion of work, the seat of the Mission and the ordinary
residence of St. Vincent de Paul.J Hence this dis-

* December 1636.

f It is probably the same Sister Marguerite who had this touching
colloquy with the Baron de Renty, one of the holiest men of his
time. Meeting her on the stairs going to the sick he said, " Whom
do you seek, Sister?" "Jesus Christ, sir." "And I also, Sister,"
said he; and from that day the gentleman wished to be associated in
all the good works of the Daughters of Charity. (" Vie de N. de
Renty," par St. Jure. Paris: Rue St. Jacques, chez Piere Le Petit
& la croix d or. 1633.)

JThe old lazar-house of St. Lazarus, on the road from Paris to St.

A New House is Needed. 147

tance, to which we owe in part the correspondence of
Mile. Le Gras and St. Vincent,* so precious for our
history, was an obstacle to the frequent communica
tion which was necessary; for although they had
agreed to see each other only as circumstances re
quired, they often had need, one of counsel, the other
of service. A change of residence was therefore re
solved upon.

Louise desired to purchase a house ; but St. Vin
cent, without disapproving of her plan, inclined to
ward a simple location, more easy, as he said, "to
make and unmake, and more conformed to the ex-
Denis, had been from the sixteenth century a home of canons regular.
In 1631 the Prior, Adrien le Bon, offered to St. Vincent, for the mis
sionaries, his benefice, to which considerable revenue was attached.
The Saint at first refused, but at last accepted. The contract was
made January 7, 1632. Five days after, the work was raised to the
. rank of a congregation by Urban VIII., under the name of Priest
of the Mission. The house of St. Lazarus belonged no more to the
Sons of St. Vincent, who had to leave it, September 1792. The
buildings, still in part existing, serve as a prison. St. Vincent s
room is still preserved, converted into a chapel. The site of the vast
enclosure is occupied by the church of St. Vincent de Paul, the rail
road station north, and streets adjoining.

* See, in a collection recently published by a priest of the Mission,
the letters of St. Vincent to Mile. Le Gras. Those of Mile, to St.
Vincent are unpublished. Many are unfortunately lost, owing to the
humility of the Saint, who hastened to destroy all that could redound
to his praise. The burning of St. Lazarus in 1789 made away with a
great number, for there remain scarcely two dated between 1625 and
1636 and four between 1636 and 1643; fourteen others come in the
four following years, from 1643 to 1646, and ninety-six during the
last fourteen years of their life. About forty are without date.

148 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

ample of Jesus Christ, who probably never had a
house of His own in this world." He looked at a
house in the Faubourg St. Martin, but there was not
room enough in it ; another, for forty or fifty thou
sand livres, proposed by Mme. Goussault, appeared
to him " too handsome for po.or Daughters;" and a
third was too far from the church. A little farm, pro
vided with stable and granary in country style, was
offered, but it was too far from the centre of their
labors ; but a house " at La Chapelle, a village near
this, going to St. Denis," wrote St. Vincent, -seemed
to unite the principal advantages they sought ; viz.,
the neighborhood of St. Lazarus, clear air from the
fields, life in the country among the good people
whose ways of living, habits, and employments the
Daughters were already accustomed to" and he
might add, in the midst of souvenirs left by another
girl of the fields, St. Genevieve, whom he would one
day give them for a model*

Mile. Le Gras and the Superior of the Hotel-Dieu,
whom she made it a duty to consult * in all her con
cerns, favored this proposition, and the purchase was
decided upon. The contract was signed by Mme.
Goussault and published, according to usage, the

* Conference of January 25, 1643. There had been formerly at La
Chapelle a hospice where St. Genevieve came from Saturday night to
Sunday with her companions to celebrate the next day at the tomb
f St. Denis. The parish was small-a hundred houses-extended
little on the side of Paris. St. Laurent was near enough. (Lebceuf,
Histoire de Diocese de Paris.)
f Letter of St. Vincent.

Removal to La CJiapclle. 149

next Sunday at the sermon,* and in May
Louise, leaving some of her Daughters to take care
of the little house in the Faubourg- St. Victor until
rented again, came to install herself with those
named by St. Vincent in La Chapelle.

* Letter 124. f Gobillon, p. 74.

CHAPTER VIII.

1636 1640.

New Labors undertaken at La Chapelle Catechism Ladies Re
treatsThe Spanish Army in Picardy Mile. Le Gras gives Asylum
to the Fugitives She sends two of her Daughters to Richelieu
Opening of the Foundling Asylum Death of Mme. Goussault
Voyage to Angers The first Hospital attended by the Daughters of
Charity.

MONG the detached notes collected by
pious hands after the death of Mile. Le
Gras we find a paper on which is writ
ten several thoughts on abandonment to
the will of God, and at the end these lines : " To go
to a new lodging with the design of there honoring
Divine Providence who conducts us, and in the dis
position of doing there all that the same Providence
will permit. To honor by this change of residence
that of Jesus and the Holy Virgin from Bethlehem
to Egypt and thence to other places not wishing
more than they to have a duelling-place on
earth."

Such were the dispositions of Louise in taking
possession of La Chapelle-Saint-Denis. To draw
the blessing of God on this new establishment,
she commenced by spending some days in complete
retreat. This exercise was already, as we know,
quite familiar to her ; but to judge from a letter of

Mile. Le Gras goes into a Retreat. 151

St. Vincent, she made a general review of her con
science beforehand, and wished to give to this re
treat a character of unusual solemnity, as being a
point of departure for higher and more perfect ways.
" Oh, what a tree you have cultivated in the garden
of God, since it has produced such fruits !" the Saint
wrote* to her, probably in this same retreat ;f and
continuing the simile, he complacently adds, in the
words of Scripture : " May you ever be a beautiful
tree producing the fruits of love !"

It is not permitted us to penetrate farther into the
secrets of her soul, or admire the hidden treasures
whose enjoyment God had reserved to herself; yet
we may know some of the exercises in which she
spent these hours of solitude. For six days she re
tired, and held no communication with externs ex
cept what was unavoidable, and that was dispatched
as briefly as possible. She adopted for the subject
of her prayer the order of the " Introduction to a
Devout Life" of the bishop of Geneva ; she read the
New Testament, and Gerson on the lives of holy
widows, to whom she had special devotion. She wrote
to St. Vincent every day that she did not see him, to
give him a summary of what passed within her soul
and her disposition of mind and body. The rest of
her time she spent in looking over the past years and
revolving the future that was likely to be hers. It
was recommended to her above all " not to be eager

* Lettre 132, adressee a " Mile. Le Gras, a La Chapelle." f Ibid.

1 5 2 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

or hurried, to go quietly, representing to herself
what the good bishop would do, our blessed Father"
as St. Vincent always called him.

She was not permitted to burden herself with rules
and practices, but to confirm herself in those she had
already undertaken. " She must avoid everything
that would lead her out of the simple way to which
she was called, and finish the exercises by a concise
confession, remembering that hers were generally a
little too long." *

Mile. Le Gras would have prolonged this retreat
if she had not been afraid "to tempt God." f She
gathered from it a renewal of strength and still
greater courage ; and labored, from the moment she
left her retreat, to shed around her the graces she
had received. From this time she called together
the women and young girls of the village, on Sun
days and festivals, to teach them the Catechism ; she
instructed the children who had attended the com
mon school: but, always observing justice in her
charity, she gave the school teacher a sum equivalent
to what she had deprived him of. At length, wishing
that some of the Ladies of Charity could participate
in the happiness she tasted in retreat, she set apart
two rooms of her house for such of them as would
not be afraid to pass some days in a village house
partaking of the simple, poor life practised there.
One of the ladies of the Hotel-Dieu came, bringing

* Lettre 130. t Ibid.

Ladies Retreats. 153

with her Mile. Lamy,* to put themselves humbly
under the direction of Louise, who, making- use of the
counsels of St. Vincent, gave them her rule of re
treat and directed them in their choice of reading
matter and the subject of prayer. Others for retreat
soon followed. Mile. d Atry, related by her mother
to the Marillac family ; an actress, decided to
change her life ; and a young girl preparing to be
married all in turn, not to mention others, placed
themselves under the direction of Louise. With
what tact and discretion she accepted this new work,
and what influence she exerted over these souls, we
may learn from the fragments of her letters, too rare,
alas ! f Louise thus made, with ladies of the world,
an apprenticeship of the delicate and important office
she was afterwards to fill in regard to her own Daugh
ters. These latter, from time to time, were making
trial of the kind of exercises, which had manifested

* Mile. Lamy, wife of the Director of the Hospital Quinze-Vingts,
who afterwards directed the General Hospital.

f One of these letters of Mile. Le Gras to an unknown lady is par
ticularly deserving of mention. It is without date. In it she defines
perfection: " A loving sweet union of the will with that of God. The
will," she continues, " is that which God has placed within our power,
what He looks for with the action that springs therefrom. Make the
least possible reflection, and live in innocent simplicity and familiarity
with God. This is the advice which your humility has required from
my poverty, and which I transmit quite simply as our Saviour dic
tates." Her elevated yet practical direction is not less visible in a
writing found while these pages were being printed; it is a rule of
life adopted by a lady at the close of a retreat, and bears date Novem
ber 17, 1636.

154 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

the extraordinary talent of their Mother in the gov
ernment of souls.

Exterior events happened, however, which troubled
the peace of the little community. It was the com
mencement of the epoch called by historians the
French period of the Thirty Years War. The cam
paign was opened by the conquerors, when sud
denly, in the early part of July 1636, the Spanish
army, commanded by the terrible Jean de Werth,
and augmented by adventurers from Poland, Croatia,
and Hungary, penetrated into Picardy, marking their
passage by pillage and ruin. Terror spread rapidly,
especially at the news that Corbie was taken and the
Croatian cavalry arriving in Compiegne. It seemed
as if the enemy were already camping at Montmartre.
The flight was general ; a universal rout ; every one
for himself. Horses, carnages, and wagons blocked
up the road from Chartres and Orleans. " Paris
awaits a siege from the Spaniards, whose advance-
guard extends to ten or twelve miles from here,"
wrote St. Vincent* on Assumption Day, while the
drum was beating in his house at St. Lazarus,
which was turned into a camp. " Here the soldiers
equip and arm their companies ; the stable, the wood
shed, the halls and cloister are full of arms, and the
court-yard of armed men." The country fled to
Paris, and Paris was so frightened that many inhabi
tants fled to other cities. But, although La Chapelle

* To M. Portail, Aug. 15, 1636.

Establishment of New Confraternities. 155

was situated on the northern road and some hours
journey only from Compiegne, Louise and her
Daughters thought not of flight. From this time
war had no terrors for the Daughters of Charity,
nor could the clash of arms interrupt their good
works. Their house, happily large enough, was
transformed into a refuge. Joyful to exercise a new
virtue, and faithful to the traditions of the first ages,
Mile. Le Gras opened her dwelling to the victims of
the invasion. Women and young girls left their un
safe fireside and came in crowds to the frontiers of
Picardy. They found in La Chapelle a supply for
all their needs, and only quitted this holy asylum
after Louise (always attentive to wants often for
gottenthe wants of the soul) had given them an
opportunity to make a mission.

The repulse of the enemy and the deliverance of
Corbie having restored security to the capital, it
was necessary to resume work with all the more
activity as in several places it had suffered the reac
tion of public misfortunes. Hence we see Mile. Le
Gras establishing new confraternities in the parishes
of Paris and at Passy ; visiting, often with Mme.
Goussault, the old associations of Montreuil, Pontoise,
Gournay, Asnieres, Grigny near Longjumeau, and
endeavoring to answer the demand for Daughters
coming in from all sides. Those whom she had sent
out seemed ready for every labor and capable of any
act of devotedness. They were called on for the
poor, for the sick soldiers at St. Germain, where,

156 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

after a retreat, the queen s ladies wished to enroll
themselves in the " Charity." The Duchess of Lian-
court and the Marchioness of Maignelay* asked for
Daughters for the schools at Liancourt and Nan-
teuiljf St. Vincent wanted them for the service of
the prisoners ; Mme. Goussault had sent others into
her domain at Anjou, and the niece of the Cardi
nal-minister wished for one to aid her in her private
good works. The company was still young and
scarcely formed, and already it seemed a providen
tial benefit necessary to the age. Mile. Le Gras was
absent from Paris when the Duchesse d Aiguillon
addressed St. Vincent. Full of gratitude for her
pious liberality, and of admiration for her virtue, the
Saint thought he could not refuse her desire, and was
about to send her Sister Marie-Denyse ; but the
latter excused herself, saying that as she left her
father and mother to serve the poor for the love of
God, she could not change her intention and go to

* Marguerite de Gondy, sister of the General of the Galleys and of
the archbishop of Paris, married at the age of sixteen, in 1588, Flori-
mon d Hallin, Marquis of Maignelay. Her husband was assassinated
in 1591. She then renounced the world to give herself to works of
the most delicate, most heroic charity. Henry IV. called her "the
good marquise." Intimate with Mme. Acarie, she had met Michel
de Marillac, of whom she said that for him the day was longer than
twenty-four hours. She wished to enter the Capuchins, but the Pope
(Paul V.) would not allow her. She died Aug. 25, 1650. (" La vie
admirable de tres haute dame Charlotte, Marguerite de Gondy,
Marquise de Maignelais." Paris, 1666.)

\ Nanteuil, eighteen kilometres south-east of Senlis, now in the
Department of L Oise.

Two Sisters are sent to Richelieu. 157

serve this grand lady. St. Vincent then sent for
Sister Barbara Angiboust, who at first consented in
tears ; but she was scarcely installed at the Luxem
bourg than he saw her running back affrighted. In
consternation at seeing herself in a grand court, she
begged him to take her from it. " Our Lord," she
said like Marie-Denyse, " had given her to the poor ;
she wished to serve them only, and to be sent back
to them." "What think you of that?" wrote St.
Vincent to Mile. Le Gras, when relating this occur
rence. " Are you not delighted to see the spirit of
God strong in these poor girls, and the contempt
with which it inspires them for the world and its
greatness? You cannot believe the courage it gives
me for the success of the Confraternity." Barbara
was then, according to her expression, given back
to the poor, and soon found in the task assigned her
means to devote herself conformably to her attraction.
The priests of the Mission, a short time established
at Richelieu, where the Cardinal had given them a
house, had just founded there a Confraternity of
Charity, and asked for two Sisters to keep the school
and assist the ladies who were nursing the victims
of an epidemic then raging in the country. Barbara
Angiboust, who was particularly skilful in bleeding
and preparing remedies, was sent with another Sister
called Louise. The journey from Paris to Poitou was
a long one in those times, and Richelieu was the most
distant mission of the Sisters ; consequently the
benediction and written advice given by St, Vincent

158 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

at their departure partook of the solemnity and pathos
of a father s farewell to a child going away perhaps
never to return. First, he begged our Lord to give
them a share in the spirit of the holy women who
accompanied Him on earth and co-operated with Him
in assisting the poor and instructing children. He
then congratulated them on going to continue the
charity that Jesus Christ practised on earth. When
he saw the two Sisters in the carriage he exclaimed,
" Who- would say that they are departing for a
work that the Son of God found worthy of himself !
How Heaven will rejoice ! What reward they shall
have in the next life ! How they can raise their
heads on the judgment-day." He gave them as their
model on the road, and for all their actions, the Most
Holy Virgin. They were to see her often before
them or beside them, and do as they might imagine
she would do, being always humble, cordial with
each other, beneficent to every one and a disedifi-
cation to no one, holding pious discourse, but not with
worldings, and to be firm as a rock against any
familiarity that men might seem to desire. In fine,
he pointed out the way they should walk when at
Richelieu. Their first care should be to go and salute
the Blessed Sacrament, and receive their orders from
the Superior of the Priests of the Mission. As soon
as they were settled, they should immediately prac
tise their rule, honor the lady officers of Charity,
whose zeal they would reanimate, striving to gain the
souls of the poor by caring for their bodies." Continu-

The Foundlings of Paris. 159

ing this way, from poor girls they would become
great queens." * Fortified by these counsels, Barbara
and her companion set out, Oct. i, 1638. They had
for provision fifty livres. This was little, for the
carriage to Tours alone had already cost them
twenty-four; but they carried with them those pro
mises which are still sufficient to guide and con
duct the Sisters of Charity to the extremities of the
earth.

Whilst he- Daughters were thus extending them
selves afar, Mile. Le Gras saw labor multiplying
around her. Thanks to her energy a new work
arose in Paris, the benefit of which is not exhausted
after two centuries. During this era of regenera
tion every misery seemed to find a counterpoise
in the charity of Mile. Le Gras or St. Vincent.
The evil in question was deeply rooted in Paris.
It appeared from the police report that in the city
and its suburbs from three to four hundred children
were abandoned every year. Those found lying in
the streets were sent to Port St. Landry,f to a house
known as the " Couche," where a widow had the
charge of them. But there was sufficient pay for
two nurses only, and most of the children died of
hunger. Often, when weary listening to their cries,

* Letter 324, placed by mistake, we believe, in 1641. The date
which we have adopted as that of the departure of Barbara and Louise
was given in Letter 214.

f Port St. Landry was on the right bank of the Seine, near the bridge
connecting the He Notre Dame with the city.

160 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

the widow or her servants put them to sleep with
laudanum,* or got rid of them by selling them for
15 or 20 cents f to women who substituted them for
children dying through their carelessness, or to beg
gars who made use of them to excite the pity of the
passers-by. It was also said that some of the little
creatures had been strangled for magical purposes, \
or to furnish blood-baths for wretches more wicked
than sick. For fifty years not a single child, accord
ing to the testimony of St. Vincent, survived its in
fancy, except perhaps a few whose presence in fami
lies was a permanent lie ; and all probably died with
out baptism, as the poor widow had never baptized,
nor had any else to baptize, a single child. ] M.
Vincent, hearing through Mile. Le Gras of this extre
mity, felt bound to apply a remedy, when one evening,
returning from a mission, he found under the walls of
Paris a vile beggar striving to cripple a child that he
was going to use for exciting public commiseration.
" Ah, barbarian," cried St. Vincent, " in the dis
tance I mistook you for a man !" and he snatched the
child from him and carried it off in his arms.

From that day he resolved on the work of the

* Discourse of St. Vincent to the Ladies of Charity.

f Sometimes they were sold for eight cents.

\ Sorcery was much practised in Paris at this time. Magical cha
racters and books were sold even at the very doors of the churches.
M. Olier on taking possession of the parish of St. Sulpice found there
an altar dedicated to Beelzebub.

St. Vincent to the Ladies of Charity assembled July n, 1657.

|| Abelly, p. 142.

Opening of the Foundling Asylum. 1 6 1

foundling children. After long reflection and prayer
he told his thoughts to the ladies of the Hotel-Dieu,
asking their assistance. These ladies visited the
house called the "Couche," where they were deeply
affected by the sight which there met their eyes.
They at once resolved to adopt twelve of the children,
whom Mile. Le Gras offered to take care of by her
Daughters. Twelve little orphans, chosen by lot,
were therefore installed in a house near the church
of St. Landry* and confided to the care of the
Daughters of Charity, who fed them with the milk of
a goat and a cow ; but soon this was found not to
agree with them, and they were taken to another
house, Rue des Boulangers,f near the gate St. Victor,
where four nurses were hired for them. The ladies
of the Hotel-Dieu only furnished maintenance and
provided the temporalities for these little creatures.
On Mile. Le Gras devolved the care of directing
her Daughters, the nurses, and the children they were
going to bring up.

" This is the work arising from the removal of the
children," St. Vincent wrote to Mile. Le Gras, and
begged her to draw up a rule for the organization of
the new establishment. At first this was confined to
the ladies in office assembled at Mme. Goussault s,
but afterwards it was transformed into a part of the

* In the city, not far from Notre Dame

f The Rue des Boulangers is still in existence, between Rue Car-
dinal-Lemoine then called Fosses-Saint-Victor, and Rue Jussieu, which
has partly taken the place of Rue St. Victor.

1 62 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

rule and given in charge to one of the first co-laborers
of Mile. Le Gras. This was Mme. Pelletier, a widow
of rank.* St. Vincent placed this lady at the head
of the house, with the title of Governess, directing
her to render a strict account of all that transpired
to Mile. Le Gras every eight, or at most every fif
teen, days. Mile. Le Gras was to remain there some
time to give the first start to the work, to secure
good order and regulate expenses. f

Little by little, as their resources multiplied, the
number of children was to be increased. In choos
ing the children they were obliged to draw lots,
as at first, lamenting that all could not be taken,
as those who were not favored by the lots seemed
condemned to certain death.

At the same time, there were others more to be
pitied than even those left at the " Couche," because
exposed to more immediate danger; viz., the poor
little waifs who were lying in gutters or on the church-
steps, waiting often until death arrived before the
tardy watchman. Should not this evil be remedied?

* Letter 83. Note p. 104.

f The budget traced by her on this occasion amounted to 2121 livres
16 sols, and contained the most minute details, which may be read with
interest. The rent of the house itself, 300 livres. For wood, 400 livres;
3 sols, 6 deniers worth of meat daily (viz., 268 livres per year) and 3
sols worth of bread are assigned to the nurses, while for the Gover
ness and Sisters 2 sols of bread and as much meat. The salt would
cost in livres, 16 sols; wine, 42 livres, 10 sols. The keeping of the
nurses is fixed at 8 crowns. In fine, everything is arranged with such
exactitude as attests the order and forethought of Mile. Le Gras.

The First Foundling Asylum. 163

St. Vincent thought it should, and every night he
went through the purlieus of the city gathering into
the folds of his cloak the little beings whose life or
death was a matter of indifference to the wretched
characters who were sole occupants of the streets at
that hour. The Saint s cloak is still preserved. The
Saint was well known and allowed to pass every
where. One night darker than usual he was stopped
by some of these wretches; but the moment they
heard Vincent s name they fell at his feet and asked
his blessing.

The memory of this old man, braving the darkness
and often the rigors of winter, and his Daughters, be
coming the visible angels of that great city, has tri
umphed over the forgetfulness of time and still lives
in the hearts of the Parisians. The artist and the
poet have contributed to render it immortal. Even
legend, which usually grows around the blemishes of
mankind, here is found to be engrafted on the truth.
Such is probably the origin of a sort of journal quoted
by several writers in which the Sisters of Charity,
especially those of the Foundlings, have written the
most memorable events recorded in their annals.
Some of these writings are charming, representing at
one time the streets covered with snow, and the Sisters
on watch as the night wears on; at another time it is St.
Vincent coming in at eleven o clock, benumbed with
cold, carrying two babies with tears freezing on their
little cheeks ; again it is a touching description of the
poor deserted children, one six days old perhaps,

1 64 LifcofMlle.Lc Gras.

another already weaned, or a third with a frightful
mark on the little arm. Farther on we see the Saint
lavishing all sorts of attention on them, or shedding
tears as they fly from his arms to heaven. But what
ever resemblance of sentiment there may be between
this document and the truth, neither the style nor
many of the facts related could warrant us in sup-
posing it authentic, as there is no trace of it in the
archives of the Mission nor in any traditions of the
Daughters of Charity. We could not pass it over in
silence, however, as many authors* have used it as
reference ; but it is not worthy of any more space in
a story beautiful enough to dispense with fiction.

Notwithstanding the sympathy widely elicited, the
work progressed slowly. As late as 1640 it had but
fourteen hundred livresa year of certain revenue, and
the number of children was constantly increasing.
Not being able to shelter all the children in the house
Rue des Boulangers, Mile. Le Gras was obliged to
give a portion of them to be nursed by women out
side. A note in which the writing of St. Vincent
is mingled with that of Mile. Le Gras gives us the
names and nurse-places of children received in March
and April 1640, with the names of their adopted
mothers. Most of these are countrywomen in the

* This journal has been quoted among others by M. Maynard in his
" Histoire de St. Vincent de Paul ;" by Martin Doisy in the " Diction-
naire d Economie Charitable ;" and for the first time, we think, in the
"Vie de St. Vincent," par Capefigue (Paris, 1827, p. 67): he says he
saw it, without telling us where or any more about it.

Anxiety of Mile. Le Gras aboiit her Son. 165

neighborhood of Paris, some of them wives of
tradesmen belonging to the Faubourg St. Victor
and other quarters of the city, as the wife of a lock
smith at the bridge of St. Landry, or of a sculptor in
Rue des Moulins, near new St. Honore. As to
the children, they sometimes had a family name;
more frequently they were known by the name re
ceived from a mother who would never abandon
them their baptismal mother. Joined to this we find
sometimes a remembrance of the day they were taken
as, Jane of the Resurrection ; or of some peculiarity
that would help to distinguish them as, Charles the
Gentleman. These are minute details which have
been quoted thousands of times, and which we only
mention on account of the interest attaching always
to the beginning of a great work.

Mile. Le Gras had lovingly adopted this unexpected
little family, and already found a part of her recom
pense in the promise that St. Vincent made: "She
to whom our Lord has given so much charity for the
children of others will merit a special care from our
Lord for her own." This means that " little Michel "
(as the Saint always called him) was at that very time
a subject of great anxiety to his mother. From his
infancy she had offered him to God. She had placed
him in the Seminary of St. Nicolas, hoping to see
him embrace the sacerdotal state, as his disposition
all along had seemed to incline him that way ; but
" either God did not will his early resolve to become
an ecclesiastic, or the world opposed it," she wrote

1 66 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

afterward ; his fervor diminished, his ideas were
changed ; and after consulting- the Superior of the
Visitation, she had taken him from the Seminary,
leaving him to board with M. Bourdoise. This
change was not for the better, and she finally sent
him to the Jesuits. Intelligence was not wanting to
Michel, and a letter of thanks he wrote to the Supe
rior of St. Nicolas made St. Vincent " hope that
some clay the child would have sense."

This child had become a man, however, and he
must choose some profession ; hence maternal anxiety
was redoubled. At the close of a retreat under the di
rection ol the Mission priests 5 " 5 he seems to have recov
ered his first fervor and resumed the idea of becoming
an ecclesiastic, and the following year actually com
menced the study of theology. St. Vincent gave
him hospitality at the College des Bons-Enfants and
congratulates Mile. Le Gras, praying that " God might
give the son as great zeal to labor for the salvation of
souls as He had given to the mother, poor and miser
able though she be/ But two months had scarcely
passed when Michel began again to hesitate. He
was tired of the life he led, and wanted to leave Paris.
The Saint, after some resistance, finally consented.
As for Louise, all her anguish revived. He wrote to
her : " If all who are away from their parents were in
danger of being lost, where would I be ?" " Remem
ber that everything works together for the good

* M. Robert de Sergis, born in 1608, received at the Mission 1628,
ordained priest 1632.

Anxiety of Mile. Le Gras about her Son. 167

of the predestined." * He allowed the young man to
accompany the missionaries to Montlhery ; but see
ing that he was not studying nor fitting himself for
anything, Vincent thought of sending him to the
bishop of Riez,f his relative, " that, being occupied
in something, idleness, the mother of all vice, might
not prevail over him.";);

All this evasion annoyed Mile. Le Gras without
abating her patience or the consolation given her by
St. Vincent. "I know you support with patience
the trial caused by your son," he wrote to her.
"Who would bear with the child if not the mother?
and whose province is it to give each one a place
but God s?" "He wished to help him to take a
.resolution, but not to influence him in a decision of
such importance that God alone must inspire it."
The Saint then recommends her to think of the
mother of Zebedee s children, to whom our Lord
said, when she petitioned for the establishment of
her children, "You know not what you ask."||

About the time of which we speak Michel
renounced entirely the long-cherished idea of being
a priest. Mile. Le Gras thought this "a proof of the
judgment of God against her," and she was so
afflicted that the Saint had to use all his persuasion
to bring peace to her soul. We find him in his
letters conjuring her to combat these thoughts which

* Letter 143.

f Louis Doni d Attichy, bishop of Riez, transferred to Autun 1653.

\ Letter 241. Letter 241. | Letter 238.

1 68 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

come from the evil spirit. "I never saw such a
woman as you, nor one Avho insists so much that
certain things are criminal. Remember that the sins
of the children are not always imputed to their
parents, especially when these latter give them good
example and instruction as you have done, thank
God! Our Lord permits the most holy parents to
have their hearts crushed. Abraham was afflicted
by Ismael, Isaac by Esau, Jacob by the majority of
his sons, David by Absalom, Solomon by Roboam,
and the Son of God himself by Judas." " By the
grace of God you have not come to that. Weep not
for the happiness of your little Michel. But, you
will tell me, it is in the cause of God I weep. It is
not for God you afflict yourself, if it is an affliction
to serve Him."

Unfortunately we are not in possession of the
letters of Mile. Le Gras, but we see by those of
St. Vincent what was the state of her mind for a
long time on account of her son. He returns con
tinually to " those too tender thoughts which are
against reason, and exaggerated sacrifices which are
against God, who wishes mothers to sacrifice part of
their goods for their children, but not to deprive
themselves of everything." Ever and anon he insists
that "the little tendernesses and amusements" which
she had not yet given up were excessive. " You have
more affection than any mother I know. I never saw
a mother so much of a mother as you are. This is the
only thing in which you are a real woman. In the

Mile. Le Gras and Mme. Goussault. 169

name of God, leave your son to the care of his
heavenly Father, who loves him better than you ; or
at least put away this eagerness."

Was there, in fact, an excess which Louise per
ceived not in this affection? We do not decide
this question, although we coincide with the opinion
of Ven. Mother Madeleine of St. Joseph, when,
in opposition to the ideas of her time, she wrote
to the biographer of Michel de Marillac:* "It
is desirable that the biographers of Saints would
not omit, as they do, their little weaknesses and
imperfections, so that those who see themselves
encumbered by the like miseries may not be dis
couraged and deterred from aiming at sanctity."
If we throw light on this weak point in Mile. Le
Gras, we mean neither to blame nor yet to make a
merit of sentiments so purely natural. We only wish
to point out the courage necessary for a nature like
hers to endure the almost constant absence of a son
so well beloved, and to show once for all the difference
between detachment and want of affection.

We see another proof of her tenderness of heart in
her affection for Mme. Goussault. God heard the
prayer of St. Vincent and united these two hearts.
"Oh, what good company!" the Saint would exclaim
when he saw them together. He advised Louise to
put aside her serious expression in the company of
her friend, and when they could not visit, being
sick, each was to send word to the other.

* Lefevre de Lazeau.

1 70 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Their health, indeed, was very uncertain. Mme.
Goussault was not any stronger than Louise. Within
thirteen years she had borne ten children, and in the
spring of 1639 she rapidly declined. " I am in trouble
about Mme. Goussault," wrote St. Vincent, July 14 of
the same year; and in another letter, " She has been
bled; it is a double tertiary fever." The sickness was
serious, but the submission of the sick one to the Di
vine Will was absolute. Calm and firm, she elicited
the admiration of all who approached her. " It
was nothing to see her in health," said St. Vincent;
"you ought to see her in sickness." Nor was he
ignorant that Mme. Goussault had adopted and
practised for a long time, with extreme exactitude,
several of the rules imposed by him on the Sisters
of Charity. In the midst of her sufferings she
thought of these holy Sisters, expressed a wish that
they would always remain faithful to their vocation,
recommended them to Mme. Segnier, wife of the
Chancellor of France,* and on the morning of the
day she died she said again to St. Vincent, " My
mind was occupied all night with your good
Daughters. Oh, if you could only know all the good
I believe of them, or the great things God has shown
me in regard to them."f

* Letter of Mile. Le Gras to Mme. Segnier, addressed to Madame
la Chanceliere, March 1655.

f Conference of St. Vincent to the Daughters of Charity, Jan. 22,
1645. Mme. Goussault was interred in her chapel at St. Gervais,
Sept. 22, 1639. (Library Nat., Cab. of Titles, 1379.)

Mile. Le Gr as goes to Angers. 171

Her death was a subject of mourning- for the
whole company. Mile. Le Gras wished the ab
sent also to partake in the sorrow. Some weeks
after she sent word to Sisters Barbara and Louise
at Richelieu,* telling them of their great loss and
recalling the devotion of Mme. Goussault to their
work. She presented the imitation of her virtues as a
duty of gratitude and a means of glorifying God.

She felt herself bound to discharge a legacy.
One of the last wishes of her friend was to procure
for the sick in St. John s Hospital,f Angers, in which
she was especially interested, the same advantage as
those of the Hotel-Dieu, viz., to establish among the
ladies of the village the custom of regular visiting,
and to introduce after them the Daughters of
Charity4

Knowing the services rendered to the sick by the
Daughters of Charity, the administrators of the
hospital, called "poor masters or fathers," were not
less desirous to see them in their hired infirmaries,
and the whole town of Angers united in the wish of
Mme. Goussault, to which both St. Vincent and
Mile. Le Gras were moreover well disposed to con
sent. It was decided that Louise should go to
Angers to confer with the administrators and prepare,

*Oct. 26, 1639.

fThis hospital was founded, 1160, by Henry II., King of England
and Count of Anjou, in expiation of the murder of Thomas a Becket.
It has been recently transformed into a museum.

\ Nat. Arch., s. 6160.

172 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

if need were, for the installation of her Daughters.
But she was not well; the bad weather was just
beginning, and the pestilence was breaking out in the
country. Nothing daunted, she set out in a coach
for Orleans, where she embarked on the Loire, Nov.
1639. After a halt at Saumur, whence she wrote to
St. Vincent, begging him to look after her son in
her absence, she reached Angers towards the ist of
December, and was received by the Abbe* Vaux,*
vicar-general of the diocese, from whom she accepted
hospitality. Exhausted by her two weeks journey ,f
she very soon, unfortunately, fell sick.

This news soon reached the capital, and the greatest
anxiety was felt in the little community at La Chapelle
and by the ladies at the Hotel-Dieu. " They pray for
you all over Paris," St. Vincent writes; "every one
is interested in your health; you cannot believe to
what extent the feeling goes." In another letter he
writes: "Oh, how I wished our Lord would let you
see the affliction of the ladies at the Hotel-Dieu
when they heard the news!"

The sickness of Louise continued through part of
the month of January; but she did not wait for her
health to attend to business. She sent first, through
Mme. Turgis, for Sister Barbara Toussainte of

* Gui Lanier, Abbe de Vaux, " was a great servant of God," accord
ing to the expression of St. Vincent de Paul. He was always de
voted to the Daughters of Charity, and kept up an active correspon
dence with Mile. Le Gras on the subject of charity.

f Letters addressed to the Daughters of Charity at La Chapelle.

The Daughters of Charity at Angers. 1 73

Suresne and Sister Clemence Ferre, originally from
Lorraine, Dec. 22, 1639. She then proposed to the
ladies of Angers to undertake the work accomplished
in Paris, and set herself to find out the reform
necessary to be made in the house. The support of
the hospital and its management left much to be
desired. Order and cleanliness were at fault; for
example, the vessels were allowed to be washed in
the wards; there was not sufficient linen,* and the
sick were not willing to come there for treatment.
, Hence Mile. Le Gras, after three months attentive
examination of the affairs, decided to accept the pro
position, which the administrators wrote and signed
Feb. i, 1640. This deed in which St. Vincent
had authorized her to take the title of Directress of
the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Sick Poor
of Hospitals and Parishes was to serve as the model
for many others. We may give a rapid sketch of it
here, and admire the perfect balance established in a
matter so delicate between the rights and duties of
each, as well as the prudence with which she stipu
lates for the liberties of her Daughters while recom
mending them to be deferential.

The Daughters of Charity (this article reads) shall
always remain subject to the Superior-General of
the Mission, and no one is to hinder them from
the practice of their rule, which nevertheless
obliges them to leave everything when the service

* There were but three dozen chemises for thirty or forty sick.
(Arch. Nat., s. 6160.)

1 74 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

of the poor requires them. In what concerns tem
poralities they shall be under the authority of the
administrators, and obey them exactly ; but they
alone shall have charge of the poor, without the
interference of any one.

They shall be maintained in health and sickness
at the expense of the hospital; make no change in
the material, color, or form of their dress; and they
shall be treated as belonging to the place and not
as mercenaries. They shall not be obliged to sit up
with the sick out of the hospital. They shall render
account of service only to the administrators; the
latter considering that if not supported by them, in
regard to the poor and servants, the Sisters cannot
do the good desired, will therefore uphold them with
their authority, and never tell them in public of a
fault, but notice such in private, and with the grace
of God it will be corrected.

In case of the death of a Sister, the administrators,
considering that she is consecrated to the service of
God and the poor, will permit her companions to
inter her decently according to their usual custom.

Finally, understanding the necessity of prevent
ing the difficulties that might arise between the
Congregation of the Mission and the administra
tors of the hospital, the foundress wished to in
sert a special article that would establish the rights
of the two authorities. The Superior-General of
Paris could change the Sisters when he judged
it necessary. On their side, the administrators could

The Daughters of Charity at Angers. 1 75

ask, at the expense of the hospital, for the change of
a Sister with whom they were not satisfied, after
having tried her a year or two, and after giving
timely notice to the Superior-General.

As to the particular rule for the Daughters drawn
up by Mile. Le Gras before she left Paris, it contained
a synopsis of the kind of life and exercises of piety
" suitable to the little company." We shall notice
here only that which relates to their duty of sick-
nurse.

Having risen at four o clock in the morning, they
shall at six o clock, after taking a little bread and
a taste of wine, or, on Communion days, a smell of
vinegar, betake themselves to those whom they
shall always consider as their lords (since our Lord,
is in them), make their beds, put the wards in order,
and give the medicines or the breakfast. During
the day they shall take great care that the sick have
all they need ; viz., their medicine or nourishment
at fixed hours, a drink when thirsty, or some pas-
tiles sweet and soothing for the mouth. They shall
stop when near them, instruct them meekly on the
principal truths of faith, solicit them to make a
general confession, and receive the Blessed Sacra
ment every Sunday as long as that will be possible
for them, and to receive Extreme Unction as soon
as they are in danger. They shall console the
dying, and suggest good resolutions to the conva
lescent.

They shall take care that all the sick are in bed at

1 76 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

seven o clock, and have a little wine or something
for the night. Before leaving them they shall help
to make the examen of conscience for those who are
able, reading the points aloud in the middle of the
infirmary ; finally, after the Litany, the Superioress
will give holy water to the Sisters and the sick. At
eight o clock they shall retire, leaving one of their
number to watch and assist those who need. The
Sister sitting up shall make her prayer beside the
sick, remembering, as well as the one who shall come
to take her place, that all the care they bestow on
the sick is a continual prayer before God. In order
that it may please God to give them grace to do all
this, they shall take as special protectors the Holy
Virgin, St. Joseph, St. Louis, St. Genevieve, St.
Marguerite, Queen of Scotland, and St. John the
Evangelist, patron of the hospital ; they shall write
often to their Superiors in Paris; they shall read
every Friday, at table, the present rule.*

The establishment of the Daughters of Charity at
Angers was a noteworthy fact. To this time, with the
exception of La Chapelle, they had only precarious
positions ; nothing permanent in their residence and
no independence of action. In the different quarters
of Paris they occupied only rooms in the place.
Above all, in the parishes, like at the Hotel-Dieu
and in the country, the Sisters were subject to the
Ladies of Charity, who paid their board and lodging,

* National Arch., s. 6160.

The Daughters of Charity at Angers. 177

and to whom they were obliged to show great defer
ence. At Angers, on the contrary, although the
temporal administration of the hospital did not
belong to them, they would have an active part in
its beginning and responsibilities, and the arrival of
three new companions, making their number eight*-
the highest yet attained in any one place permitted
them to observe with regularity the exercises of
community life. This foundation commenced then
under the happiest auspices, and the public calami
ties which occurred soon after convinced those who
were still doubting of the benefits resulting from it.
The pestilence was not slow to break out in the hos
pital; perhaps it was already there when the Sisters
took charge :f but they braved the contagion he
roically, and the plague seemed to respect them.
This was for them a baptism of fire; they came from
it conquerors, having gained the right of land, so to
speak, from city to city, and from Heaven the grace

* The eight Daughters of Charity near whom Mme. Turgis had to
remain during part of the following summer were Elizabeth Martin,
Superioress, native of Argenteuil; Cecil Agnes Angiboust, from the
diocese of Chartres; Marie Matrilomeau, of Poissy; Marguerite
Franoise, of St. Nicolas in Lorraine; Barbara Toussainte, of Suresne;
Clemence Ferre, of La Champiniere, near Nancy; Madeleine Mouget,
of Sucy in Brie; and Genevieve Caillou, of St. Germaine in Laye.
(Nat. Arch., s. 6160.)

f "The Sisters of Angers," said St. Vincent, "entered the hospital
of that city when infected with contagion; they treated the plague-
stricken like the others, and the pest respected them." (Conference
Oct. 16, 1641.)

178 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

to do the good which Mile. Le Gras was happy to
set on foot in many places. " The Daughters of
Angers," she said many years after, " have a special
gift of God for the service of the sick poor in the
hospitals. *

To return to herself. After still some weeks with
the Abbe Vaux, she set out for Paris,f where her
presence became necessary, not only for her Daugh
ters, but for the general business of charity. J In
obedience to St. Vincent, she did not travel this time
by water, but accepted her host s carriage as far as
Tours. There she hired a conveyance to Orleans,
and made the rest of the journey in the public coach.
She had given to Angers the choice of her flock,
but she picked up several young country girls who
offered themselves to enter the company. It is the
property of charity never to impoverish, and the
characteristic of religious families to enrich them
selves by the practice of this virtue.

* Letters of Mile. Le Gras to Sister Madeleine (1645) and to Sisters
Claude and Naire (Nov. 28).

f Fevrier 26, 1640.

\ Lettres de St. Vincent.

Letter of Mile. Le Gras to the Abbe Vaux, dated, La Chapelle,
March 23, 1640.

CHAPTER IX.

1641.

Mile. Le Gras is established at the Foundling Asylum St. Denis
Her Interior Life, from her Writings and the Souvenirs of the first
Sisters Interior Combats and Victories Her Humility, and Charity
for her Daughters.

[ER JOURNEY and the severe sickness she
had just gone through had greatly and for
ever shattered the frail constitution of
Mile. Le Gras. According to St. Vincent,
she lived from that time " contrary to all human ap
pearance,"* and by "a continual miracle granted to her
faith." " I felt strengthened by the obedience which
made me act," she wrote. " It seems to me that God
will give me health as long as I believe Pie can do it,
remembering the faith which made St. Peter walk on
the water, and acting without any contribution from
myself, and with much consolation in the thought that
God wills me (unworthy as I am) to help my neigh
bor to know him."

Notwithstanding the ruin of her health, the twenty
years she had still to run were perhaps the most
fruitful portion of her life. Forgetting the excess of
her own suffering and the danger still threatening
herf (she had to be assisted by others), yet she main-

* Letter of St. Vincent, March 3, 1660.
f Letter to the Abbe Vaux, May 26, 1640.

i8o Life of Mile. Le Gras.

tained a constant correspondence with the Daugh
ters at Richelieu and Angers and the Abbe Vaux,
who, entrusted with their spiritual direction, showed
for them an indulgence which she thought a little too
lenient. " You tell me nothing but good of them," she
writes. " Do not fear to let me know their faults as
well." We notice the most affectionate solicitude in
every page of her letters. At one time she is all anxiety
concerning the trouble arising between the Sisters
and the administrators of St. John s Hospital, " the
administrators pretending that the Sisters wish to
gain the whole thing." At another time she com
plains of their silence or is uneasy about their health.
Sister Elizabeth is sick; immediately she is in alarm.
" I am in need of her. I think with the advice of the
doctor as regards her strength, you had better send
her to me ; but the remains of my sickness will not per
mit me to write more." * To the sick one she writes :
" How I sympathize in your pains! Write to me frank
ly about them ; I shall read and understand them all.
Have great courage ; God will draw His glory from
your misery. It is my consolation, when I see my
self, as I often am, under the correcting hand of God,
to think that I can serve as an example to deter others
from offending God as I have done, by showing them
that He knows where to find those who have opposed
His will and are debtors to His justice." f

* We have nearly one hundred letters from Mile. Le Gras to the
Abbe Vaux.

f Letter to Sister Elizabeth Martin, July 5, 1641.

Mile. Le Gr as goes to the Faubourg St. Denis. 1 8 1

But correspondence was not half her occupation,
and in La Chapelle, as in Paris, her work was always
growing. She found on her return from Angers
young girls from Lorraine whom St. Vincent had
sent to her house for protection from the war, then
desolating the province. She provided for the estab
lishment of some, and others wished to enter her
community. This latter ceased not to increase ; re
cruits for it arrived from all parts, commencing al
ready to realize the truth of Scripture so applicable
to the community to this day " I shall call you from
all the nations of the earth." St. Vincent says, " And
God, seeing the Daughters acquitting themselves of
their duty so well, was not slow in varying the na
ture and multiplying the number of their employ
ments." The expansion of their labor caused daily
more frequent intercourse with externs, who took
active part in the work ; for we must remember that
the Daughters of Charity continued to form one fam
ily, so to speak, with the ladies, and could not sub
sist without their help. Hence the house in La Cha
pelle soon became not only too small, but too far
from the centre of Paris, and too difficult of access,
especially in winter, when the rain turned the roads
into swamps.* Mile. Le Gras thus decided once
more to change her residence, in 1641 ; but the trouble
experienced five years before was now spared her.

*Even the post did not always venture out, and letters from An
gers to Louise were addressed under coyer to her son, who was then
at the College des Bon Enfants.

1 82 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

St. Vincent had just bought from two citizens of
Paris, Jean Desmaret and Claud Sadot, a house situ
ated in the Faubourg St. Denis and almost opposite
St. Lazarus, which he offered to rent to her. She ac
cepted eagerly, and was soon in possession.*

The parish of Saint Laurent, where Mile. Le Gras
founded the new establishment, was one of the poor
est and most extensive of Paris, composed for the
most part of vacant lots and obscure lanes, where a
whole population sought refuge, driven backward by
misery from the centre to the extremities of the
city.

With the authorization of the head teacher oi
Notre Dame, who had charge of the little schools of
the city and suburbs, Mile. Le Gras soon opened a
free class, where she had the young girls of the
Quartier St. Lazare instructed in grammar and other

*This house, which remained the Mother-house until the Revolu
tion, consisted of three suites of rooms adjoining one another, one
of these was newly built, a court, stable, wells, garden, and a place
newly paved in front, out to the paving of the street. Some years
later, thanks to a legacy of Mme. Goussault, Mile. Le Gras was
able to purchase it, for 17,050 livres, to which she added 800 for a
little corner-piece of land along the new Rue St. Laurent. The
contract was made April i, 1653, in presence of N. Laisant, the notary
of Chalet, and preserved in the Nat. Arch. (6160.) It was signed by
Mile. Le Gras, Srs. Francis, Germaine Poisson, Julienne Loret,
Louise Christine Ride, Mathurine Guerin, Marie Tournot, and Mar
guerite of Vienne. Confiscated in 1793, the house was sold in 1797, and
on the site of the demolished chapel were opened Faith and Charity
streets. Later it became an infirmary for Dr. Dubois, and disap
peared altogether to make way for the Boulevard Magenta.

Interior Life of Mile. Le Gras. 183

branches of learning.* This was the beginning of a
work to which the company attached itself more
every day, but which had not been attempted before,
except by those in the neighboring villages.f

What would have been the joy of that foundress
had it been given her to foresee the number of schools
throughout that immense capital which, in spite of
every obstacle, thousands of children are attending
to-day !

Apart from this modest commencement to a great
work, with some visits, more and more rare, to the
neighboring "Charities," a cordial meeting with
Mme. de Chantal,J reminding us of St. Francis and
St. Dominic, and a pilgrimage to Chartres for the

* We still possess the text of the petition addressed by Mile. Lc
Gras on this occasion to the grand chantre or dcoldtre, of Notre
Dame, Michel le Masle, Seigneur des Roches de Saint Paul; the au
thorization granted by him, dated May 29, 1641; and a little easy cate
chism of questions and answers, composed by Mile. Le Gras, prob
ably destined for that school, over which she held special direction.

f " You ought to instruct yourselves," said St. Vincent to the
Daughters of Charity, "that you may be capable of teaching the
young girls; you must do this very carefully, for it is one of the de
signs you had in view when giving yourselves to God." (Conference
of April 16, 1641.)

\ Mme. de Chantal came to Paris during the summer of 1641, and
left in the month of November for Moulins, where she died Dec. 13,
the same year.

In 1644, probably. The pilgrimage to Chartres was then in great
devotion at Paris. This was the period in which M. Olier received
such signal grace in Chartres, which circumstance gave rise to the
veneration always professed for this ancient sanctuary by the com
pany of St. Sulpice.

184 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

purpose of recommending to the Holy Virgin the
wants of the company and the still undecided
future of her son, there is nothing to attract at
tention during the first years of Mile. Le Gras in
the Faubourg St. Denis. For the community this
was a period of formation ; for her, a time of silence
and interior life ; and for us, alas ! " the garden en
closed " of our history. Yet while we regret our
inability to admire these hidden treasures ignored
even by herself, these acts of heroic charity which
noiselessly marked her every-day life, we are happy
to catch some lineaments of this spiritual physiog
nomy from numerous notes left by her and still un
published, and which date, in part at least, at this
epoch. These are meditations, souvenirs of retreat
at Pentecost (her own feast-day), reflections proper
for a solemnity, a pilgrimage, or counsels addressed
to " her dear Sisters" a title she extended to every
soul aspiring to perfection by divine love. They are
written as the pen ran along no order, no connec
tion one with another; but we find in them a large-
minded, simple devotion, the enemy of " little prac
tices which serve to amuse and are nothing when
compared to solid virtue, a firm judgment, and
an elevated mind (perhaps a little subtle) which had
been well strengthened and nourished by profound
reading." Her thoughts naturally fly to the heights.
The plan of God in creating the world, embracing
the Incarnation outside the fall of man ; Christian
life united to the sublime order of the universe, and

Interior Life of Mile. Le Gras. 185

which leads the soul, by mortification, to the purity
of paradise these seemed among the subjects pre
ferred for her contemplation. But the principal idea
the motherly idea which runs all through is that
of love ; not the general love experienced by all pre
destined souls, but " the love which God expects
from cherished souls those whom He has chosen to
practise on earth the purity of charity." " My
Saviour," she writes in one of those meditations,
"what light have I not received on the love you
desire from souls chosen to exercise on earth the
purity of charity! Behold us a little flock ! Could
we pretend to it ? It seems to me that we have this
desire in our heart : O pure Love, how I love you !"
Love is single in His eyes, and has but one object.
Reading that Jesus Christ substituted our neigh
bor for Himself to help our inability to render Him
personal service, the thought seemed to penetrate
her heart in a most intimate and particular manner.
As to the love of God for us, she expresses it thus :
" The love of God for our souls proceeds from the
knowledge He has of the excellent being He has
given them." " They are an act outside of God,
analogous in some sort to that which he produces in
Himself by engendering the Second Person of the
Divinity. The saints are those who have most
loved :" such is the starting-point of her love for
them. The salient points of their life, the spirit
which animated them, the graces received by them,
often furnish abundant food for her meditations. On

1 86 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

St. Fiacre s Day, for example, she contemplates this
saint in the moment of his conversion, leaving his
kingdom to take the government of another of
greater importance, since it is said that " man is a
world in abridgment." " Oh, how beautiful to see
such a soul ascend to heaven," she exclaims, " and
there received by the King of kings in triumph and
magnificence as a prince accompanied by his court,
viz., his passions which he has conquered !" On the
feast-day of St. Denis she rejoiced at the choice
God had made of this saint to unite us to the Di
vinity. " The nothingness of paganism from that
have you drawn France," she said to him ; and adds
with prophetic instinct, " Obtain for the people
whom your blood brought to Jesus Christ that this
mountain now smoking may attract the flame of
Divine Love ! Inflame our hearts !" Two centuries
have passed, and that prayer, hitherto unknown to
men, has been heard in heaven ; and on Montmartre,
the hill of the martyrdom of St. Denis is raised the
basilica consecrated to Divine Love.

If in these meditations, as we may judge from these
hasty extracts, the thought shifts from one thing to
another, the form returns very often to the framework.
Sometimes, however, it is a whisper of eloquence all
the truer as it is unconscious, passing across the
page like the echo of a stronger voice. Such, for
example, is this magnificent aspiration to the Most
High : "Remove my blindness, Light Eternal ; sim
plify my mind, Perfect Unity. May my self-suffi-

Interior Life of Mile. Le Gras. 187

ciency be no barrier to the power of the love Thou
hast given to my soul." Such are also the counsels
given to her Daughters, which might be mistaken
for a fragment of mystic poetry from St. Francis de
Sales : " Let not the thorns surrounding the rose pre
vent you from adorning yourself with this bouquet,
since it will render you agreeable to our Lover, of
whom the Spouse in the Canticle, she whom we
should hold as our Abbess, and who has preceded us
in love, has said, He is white and ruddy. Let us
preserve His image in us, and resemble Him by these
two eminent characteristics of purity and charity
represented by the whiteness and vermilion of the
rose.

What adds to the interest of these scattered leaves
is a number of familiar details which people might
find too minute, but which the family would gather
up and preserve as relics. They reveal, among other
things, divers practices of daily piety suggested to
Mile. Le Gras by her increasing devotion to the hid
den life of our Lord, and principally His sojourn in the
womb of His Mother. " Hearing this mysterious state
spoken of," she writes in the year 1642, a little be
fore Advent, " I applied myself to it with deep re
flection, and a new light was given me with a desire
to honor this mystery by some appropriate prayers."

It was at this time that she made the resolution of
saying a rosary composed of nine grains, in honor of
the nine months preceding the birth of the Infant
God ; and to encourage in her Daughters a taste

1 88 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

for this holy exercise, she prepared for them in a lit
tle box as many chaplets as were necessary for each
to be given one, to be distributed after her death.
Elsewhere we find promises made to the Holy Vir
gin to draw down her protection on the Missionaries
and the Daughters of Charity, whom she never sepa
rated in her thoughts, and to obtain the preservation
of purity in one and the other company. " Prom
ises accomplished," she writes later, after she had
given to Chartres a little Notre Dame, to St. Lazarus
a picture of the Blessed Virgin, where is the chap-
let of pearls, and to the Mother-house a wooden
statue holding the chaplet of nine grains. Elsewhere,
again, are noted coincidences which surprise her,
where the goodness of God manifests itself, and she
breaks out in grateful acknowledgment. She writes it
to preserve the remembrance. " St. Benedict s Day,"
we find written in one place. " I have had a new
reason for trusting implicitly in Divine Providence.
Deprived of Communion, and being in great sorrow
for my sins, I felt an extraordinary desire for Holy
Communion, and I asked of God if it were His holy
will to let my confessor . know it, and he, without
hearing from me on the subject, called on me for that
purpose, which gave me great consolation." Farther
on: " 1 set out this February 5th from St. Agatha to St.
Cloud. It seems to me that our Lord gave me the
thought of receiving Him as the Spouse of my soul ;
and that this Communion was a sort of espousals ;
and I felt myself more strongly united to Him on this

Interior Life of Mile. Le Gras. 189

account, which was extraordinary, as the thought
of quitting- all to follow Him, and to look upon the
difficulties I would encounter, is the proof of my
partnership with Him." She adds: " I had a desire
to have Mass said to-day, being the anniversary of
my marriage, but I held back to make an act of pov
erty, wishing to be dependent on God in the action
I was going to do ; but, O delicacy of Divine Provi
dence! on arriving at the altar the priest had the
thought to offer it for me as an alms, and it was the
Mass of Espousals !"

If we now catch the perfume of piety from these
pages, what must have been for her Daughters
the sight of their Mother praying and medi
tating in their midst! That alone was a sermon.
Always recollected in the midst of a multiplicity
and diversity of business, before the altar she was
fixed and immovable. " I saw her," wrote Sister
Guerin, " one day that she was too weak to hold
herself erect, hearing: Mass with her head and hands

o

against the balustrade at St. Lazarus, without move
ment, as if she were dead ;" and when some one com
plained of some inconvenience preventing their
prayer, she said,/ You would not have felt it had you
a lively faith." She spoke from experience.

The graces God showered on her in prayer
" those particular graces which have all power over
the soul that loves" could not entirely escape the
notice of her Daughters. In her instructions to them
she appeared transported with love, and often spoke

i go Life of Mile. Le Gras.

in bursts of rapture unknown to herself. She was
often seen coming- from Holy Communion bathed in
tears which left their trace a long time on the cloth.
She tried to conceal her devotion, but on Fridays,
between two and three o clock P.M., and during
Lent, she was sometimes surprised before the cruci
fix in tears, condemning herself aloud for being the
cause of the sufferings, known and unknown, of the
Saviour.* This supernatural intensity of sorrow she
brought to the confessional, where she accused her
self with such vehemence that St. Vincent had all he
could do to calm her.

But this was not all her suffering; and this
holy soul would not appear in all her beauty
did we pass over in silence the interior martyr
dom she endured with a courage all the more he
roic as it was the more hidden. Without deciding
how much nature had to do with her sufferings, to
which, no doubt, her distrust of self gave some occa
sion, we may affirm that she was continually on the
rack, except the very last month of her life, when
"our Lord," as she said herself, " put her in a state
to bear everything in sufficient peace. "f

To have an idea of her mental torture we must see
her letters to St. Vincent. " There is no anguish like
incertitude ;" and still she feels herself " full of irreso
lution and shrouded in darkness." Her mind is

* Written after the death of Mile. Le Gras by Sister Fran9oise
de Pauli.

\ Letter to St. Vincent, January 4, 1660.

Interior Life of Mile. Le Gras. 191

" enveloped entirely, so feeble is it." It is the " prey
of all sorts of imaginations, vain and frivolous appre
hensions, and distrustful thoughts." The reading of
the " Memorial" of Grenada caused her one day such
fear as pierced her through. It is true, she adds,
"the meditation of these words, God is who is/"
calmed her. Another time she wrote this familiar
note : " St. Thomas s Day. All day great trouble of
mind from my own abjection, abandonment, annihi
lation of self; I seem to myself a sink of pride,
abandoned by God, which abandonment I have de
served by my infidelities, with great oppression of
heart, causing in moments of violence great physi
cal sufferings." Again, the Tuesday after, being in
the same pain : " I see myself a subject of the justice
of God ; and accepting His ordinance, I felt a little
more tranquil, having taken as the subject of
prayer The peace of God which surpasses all
understanding/ She saw nothing in herself but
misery and affliction, hardness and opposition to the
grace of God. a O my very dear Father," she ex
claimed, "if our good God would let you see me
as I am how frightful I would appear to you !
I find nothing in myself but crime. The state to
which my relaxation, laziness, and infidelity have re
duced my soul would make saints tremble. ... I
must appear to them without love. . . . My infideli
ties give me great fear for the future. ... I dread
lest my past and perhaps my present obstinacy may
cause my ruin miserable that I am !" She feared

1 92 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

that " God being angry would not accept her service
any longer; that His mercy Avould tire of being exer
cised on a subject always disagreeable to Him ; . . .
in short, that she would die in impenitence." " I
cannot refrain from telling you," she wrote to St.
Vincent, " that to-day I am in great affliction on the
subject of predestination, caused by some thoughts I
have had in prayer. They have oppressed my mind so
that I was obliged to make an act of resignation to
the designs of God, should I and my son be forever the
objects of His justice. . . . Oh, if you could know
my fears, what a comfort it would cause me!" She
always winds up with "the fear of being abandoned
by God, as I fear to have deserved many times."
" When I let myself be carried away by my fears,
which have the same effect as real afflictions, I ought
to be dealt with roughly ; . . . but fear, nonsense, or
pride prevents me speaking of myself." Notwith
standing, this breaks out through all her effusions:
" She would rather die than disobey." But in hours
of obscurity the confusion of her thoughts condemn
her to silence ; she could not make herself known,
and she seemed to be without any direction.*

She attributed to herself all the faults committed
around her. " The weakness of our Sisters," she
wrote to the Abbe Vaux,f " is only the fruit of the
poor garden of my wretched cultivation ; my sins
cause all that, and it seems to me I merit the great-

* Letter to St. Vincent, Nov. 16, 1643.
f Letter, March 10, 1643.

Humility of Mile. Le Gras. 193

est punishment for all their failings/ The death of
her Daughters is still another chastisement of her
infidelities; and St. Vincent was obliged to tell her
that she was treated like the rising Church, against
which God must have appeared in anger when He
called away her children by martyrdom. She always
feared that her work would perish ; a fear causing
sadness equal to that of Agar in the desert beside
her dying boy ; yet greater still, as she imagined that
her sins caused all the trouble. Sometimes she con
ceived the desire of being like Jonas cast into the sea
to appease the tempest. Her heart all this time was
never embittered; she felt that "God draws His
glory from such persons, and that His power had no
need of their vileness ;" * but she avenged herself in
abasing and vilifying herself continually ; she con
stantly thirsted for humiliation, and would have per
formed all the drudgery of the house had her strength
permitted. As it was, she served in her turn at
table, and washed the dishes of the community. In
the weekly conference she was the first to say the
Cnlpa. She was seen in the chapel to kiss the feet
of her Daughters, or rather of her Sisters, as she
would never give them any other title, nor would
she receive from them that of Mother, which she
reserved for the Holy Virgin. In the refectory she
asked pardon, either prostrate or standing, with her
arms extended. To those who came to tell her their

* Letter to St. Vincent, March 23, 1643.

194 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

temptations she confessed to having had the like,
and sent for any one to whom she had given pain,
even when the other was in fault. She expressed
her regret most humbly, and, prostrating with her
face to the ground, would insist on the Sister passing
over her body. She would then rise bathed in tears.
Her chief desire was to be trodden under foot ; and
the more she was favored by the gifts of God the
more she sought to humble herself beneath the feet
of all, like magnificent forest-trees which bend
their lofty branches all the lower the more they are
laden with precious fruit.

Everything around her reflected her sentiments.
The resources of the community were restricted.
Exact poverty was practised in nourishment, cloth
ing, etc. The table would have been more re
stricted but for the wants of those whom she
always called " our dear masters, our lords, the poor ;
for being," she said, " their servants, we ought not
to be better treated than our masters." In what
concerned herself personally she carried this prin
ciple so far that St. Vincent wrote to her, " You
do not nourish yourself enough ; you are the mur
derer of yourself, from the little care you take
of yourself;" and when her health required some
thing different from the other Sisters, it was such
torture for her that they had to try all sorts of ex
pedients to gain her consent.

She aspired to such perfect detachment that St.
Vincent, in one of his letters, feared not to designate

Humility of Mile. Le Gras. 195

her by this periphrase worthy of a saint : " She who
loves poverty in a sovereign degree."- However,
when she asked his permission to give up everything
so that she "could only live like the poor," f ne
would not allow her, The fortune whose free dis
position he obliged her to manage was very limited.
It consisted of some property in Auvergne and an
income from the Hotel de Ville, without speaking of
unclaimed goods in her ancient dwelling, among
them a cabinet from Germany, mentioned in her will,
and another large cabinet of wood given her by the
Duchess of Liancourt; but this patrimony was so
scant that, to pay her own expenses and those of her
son, she often accepted the kind assistance of Mme.
de Marillac, her cousin.

After the death of M. Le Gras her costume had
always been that of widows, who, according to the
expression of the time, made profession of being
devout, and St. Francis de Sales could not reproach
her with putting on what he termed " the sign;"
but, little by little, she put off all that appeared
to her still savoring of the world. Like all ladies of
rank, she ordinarily wore a mask when she went out,
and gloves to protect her from the cold, which she
felt severely ; but she gave them up when she went
to Angers, J under pretext of getting the benefit of the
air. She did not wish new clothes; if they were

* Letter 91.

f See, in Chap. 17, "Conference on the Virtues of Mile. Le Gras.

\ M. Almeras writing about Mile. Le Gras.

1 96 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

brought to her, she did not fail to send them away
the moment she perceived that they were new.
One day, in winter, a petticoat warmer than hers
was left beside her bed, but she refused it, and sent
it to Sister Genevieve, who had taken possession of
the other one. -What!" she exclaimed, -you to
wear my old clothes? You may wear them when I
am dead; not before."* The black head-dress or
coiffe, then called capot, in which her portraits
always represent her, she had bought at the broker s.
Her cloak had been worn out and patched with dif
ferent-colored pieces before she could be persuaded
to use a piece of serge given her to mend it.

Poor as was this costume, there was nothing com-
mon about the one who wore it. Her height was
rather above medium; her beauty, marked in the reg
ularity of her features, favored the unconscious dig-
nity and grace of her bearing. " The declared enemy
of studied attitudes and constrained postures," sim
ple, gay, cordial, Mile. Le Gras always appeared the
same, seeking to correct what St. Vincent called
"cette petite sdriositr~w of seriousness which
nature had given her, but which grace had already
mitigated, -not fearing occasionally to mingle a
little vinegar to the ordinary sweetness of her man-
ner." These efforts were not without merit, above
all in the midst of such interior trials ; she confessed
to one of her Daughters that " often in recreation

* This was told by Sr. Genevieve Caillou to the Daughters of
Charity of Pantin.

Charity of Mile. Le Gras. 197

her heart was so torn she could scarcely open her
mouth ; yet this was the time she did her best to
laugh." Naturally lovely and warm-hearted, she
accused herself of too much promptitude. " I com
mit many faults by that, not counting those of
malice ;" and she accused herself of speaking loud to
hasten affairs when coming or going.* St. Vincent
would not see any sin in that, and her Daughters, on
the contrary, wondered at the affability with which
she always received them, the first to salute, never
speaking except in a tone of entreaty, and profuse
in her thanks for their services or for the labor
attached to their employments, at which they were
often confused. No one could complain of being-
treated with less affection than others. Neverthe
less, in the number passing through her hands there
were often, as their companions said, rough and
ignorant individuals who grumbled and murmured,
and took it amiss to be told of their faults. At such
times she would pretend to have provoked their
displeasure by her rudeness, and excused them, say
ing it was only a natural defect of their mind, or an
excess of frankness preferable to dissimulation.
Thus she bore patiently for years with very imper
fect Sisters, not allowing herself to despair of their
amendment.

She had maternal compassion for those who suf
fered pains of body or mind. She went to visit

* Notes written during a retreat.

198 Life of Mile. Le GraS.

the Sisters who were sick in the parishes, and rose
in the night to see those who were in the infir
mary ; and when her health would not permit her to
assist in what she termed her last act of love, she
sent, by one of their companions, sweet messages full
of tenderness and adieus full of hope. The death
of the Sisters was such a grief that the news had to
be communicated to her with care, and St. Vincent
would write her as he would to a mother weeping
for her children, offering her as a model the resigned
submission of the Holy Virgin on Calvary.* Every
thing in her life was one, we may truly say ; for, after
having drawn all things into one, or into love, by her
meditations, she made love the principle of all her
actions, giving thus, by her example, the best com
mentary on the beautiful name whose excellence she
set forth in the midst of her Daughters, and showed
herself worthy to bear " Daughter of Charity that
is to say, Daughter of God, for God is Charity." t

* Letter 125.

f St. Vincent, Conference Aug. 12, 1640.

CHAPTER X.

1641 1646.

Progress and Constant Development of the Work Origin of the Title
Sister-ServantFirst Daughters of Charity authorized to make
their Vows M. Portail is named Director Establishment of a
Council Accidents and Divine Protection.

f|HE Daughters of Charity were not as yet
formed into a distinct congregation, and
therefore had not had any definite rule-
Faithful to his custom, St. Vincent, before
framing the constitution, wished that practice should
prove its wisdom, and, as often happened in his life,
experience fully justified what his prudence had in
spired. Had the rules been traced out in the com
mencement of the work, they would only have been
adapted to the Sisters visiting the sick in the parishes.
But during the ten years just elapsed, the schools,
the hospital, the foundlings, and the new mission
of assisting the prisoners, had successively been en
trusted to them, and hence certain modifications con
formable to circumstances, to requirements, and, so
to speak, to the whisperings of grace, had been nec
essary in the first regulations drawn up by Louise ;
tor it was she who prepared everything, matured and
conducted it to the end. The little family lived
from day to day under the Divine action, and M.

2OO Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Vincent and Mile. Le Gras only sought to second
the views of Providence, who, without any apparent
plan in advance, quietly and sweetly continued the
work. A word of St. Vincent in the Conferences, a
reflection expressed, often unintentionally, was taken
up and little by little became tradition. One day it
is a custom that struck him when visiting" the Con
vent, and which he introduces amongst his Daugh
ters. " The Annunciades call their Superior Ancelle.
That made me think of you," he said. " Henceforth
you also will give no other title to your Superioress
than that of Sister-Servant a glorious title which
she shares with the head of the Church, for all ponti
fical briefs bear this signature : Clement, Leo, etc.,
Servant of the Servants of Jesus Christ." Another
time, 1642 a date which he little deemed so memora
ble for his company St. Vincent related the impres-,
sion made on him by hearing, some days before, the
Brothers Hospitaliers pronounce their formula of

vows: "I, Brother , make a vow and promise

to God to keep all my life poverty, chastity, obedi
ence, and to serve our lords the poor." " O my
Daughters," he added with emotion, "if you knew
how agreeable to Jesus Christ is this honor of the
poor, His dear members !" In speaking thus he
only gave way to the fulness of his heart ; but, un
known to him, he was sowing a fertile seed. His
words were so penetrating that several Sisters, deeply
moved, asked if they also might engage themselves
by vow. The Saint did not say against it; and after
explaining to them the difference between solemn

The first to make their Vows. 201

and simple vows, he said they might be permitted to
contract the latter engagement, which would not
make them religious ; for when " we say religious, we
include the cloister, grating, and things incompatible
with their vocation; but these simple vows will not
be less sacred for your souls." At the same time he
recommended them to be on their guard against act
ing without permission from their superiors ; to be
satisfied with making known their desire, whatever
would be the decision.

The earth was too well prepared for the seed not
to germinate immediately, and several of the Daugh
ters of Charity hastened to ask the desired permission.
The authorization was granted for one year to four
of their number, and the 2$th of March, 1642,"* was
chosen for the first oblation. This was the anniver
sary of the day when, eight years previous, Mile. Le
Gras devoted herself to the work. Not willing to
separate herself from her Daughters, the Mother re
newed her promise with them.f Moreover, all this

* This date is given us in the Conference held in 1659, on the vir
tues of Barbara Angiboust.

f The archives of the Mission possess a copy of this formula of
vows. The last lines are in the writing of Mile. Le Gras. It runs
thus: "I, the undersigned, in the presence of God, renew my prom
ises of baptism, and make a vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience
to the Vicar-General of the Priests of the Mission, in the company of
the Daughters of Charity, to apply myself all this year to the corporal
and spiritual service of the sick poor, our true masters; and this with
the help of God, which I ask through his Son Jesus crucified, and by
the prayers of the Blessed Virgin."

(Signed) "JEANNE OF THE CROSS."

2O2 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

took place in the silence of their conscience. Disposed
for Holy Communion, hearing Mass for that intention,
immediately after the elevation of the Sacred Host
they contracted with Jesus a secret alliance, which,
without being a formal term of engagement, was evi
dently intended by each to be renewed in perpetuity
until the day of their heavenly espousals.

We would like to know more of these oldest of the
family, these elect, these four corner-stones of the
edifice ; but, alas ! Barbara Angiboust is the only
one whose name or history we have. We know it
was she who fled from the Duchess of Aiguillon and
begged St. Vincent to give her the happiness of
serving the poor. Received by Mile. Le Gras July i,
1634, when the little community was still lodging in
the Rue Fosses-Saint-Victor, she was one of the
oldest and one who best understood the spirit of the
company.* She was also, as her companions said,
one of the most gifted ; her gayety and agreeable
manner attracted the ladies to the service of the poor,
and the latter to the service of Jesus Christ. As
many as sixty women and young girls might some
times be counted gathered around her to learn the
Catechism or the way to make their prayer. Most
zealous for the observance of the rule, full of humble
deference for St. Vincent and Mile. Le Gras, whose
letters she always read on her knees, Barbara I or-
gneilleuse (Barbara the proud) as she always signed

* These details are borrowed from a Conference on the virtues of
Sister Barbara. This Conference took place shortly after her death.

The first to make their Vows. 203

herself possessed every quality necessary for the post
assigned her at Richelieu, where we left her; from
there she had been recalled to Paris, and sent to the
service of the galley-slaves, whom she attended with
unalterable meekness and patience. Often these poor
creatures threw on the ground the food she brought
them; but Barbara picked it up without a word,
looked at them as kindly as ever, hindered the guard
from striking them, and continued to beg for their
wants. From the galleys she went afterwards to the
foundlings, and manifested for them the same de
voted zeal ; holding on her knees all night those for
whom she had no room in the cradles. Always
ready for everything, an accomplished type of the
Sister of Charity, Barbara well merited to be one of
the first to consummate her sacrifice and unite her
self by vows. But who were her companions? For
these we are reduced to simple conjecture, and for one
among them we may mention our conjecture here.

" Of the first five whom the Divine Goodness
willed to be entirely dedicated to Him, one is in
heaven," wrote Mile. Le Gras* some years after.
This information is very vague ; but it is worth
something if we connect it with the other notice of
Jeanne d Allemagne, viz., " this is the first deceased of
those who gave themselves to God in that way."f

* To St. Vincent, dated April 4, 1655. It is needless to remark that
in writing " five" Mile. Le Gras included herself.

f Conference on the virtues of Jeanne d Allemagne, written by
Mile. Le Gras, 1644.

204 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

But from the Sister of Suresne, who died of the
plague in 1631, to Jeanne d Allemagne, in 1644, how
many Servants of the Poor had already received their
heavenly reward ! How, then, explain this remark
without supposing that Jeanne also formed a part of
that privileged group ? Besides, she was well worthy
of it, for "there was nothing found to reprove in her
but an excess in her desire to serve God and apply
herself to prayer."* Being at first door-keeper with
the Carmelites, in order to become a Sister of
Charity she had to conquer the resistance of the
Carmelite Mother, who would have made her a choir
nun, and the objections of St. Vincent, who was
always a little doubtful of Sisters who had been in
convents. But her vocation was irresistible. She
could be seen at the door of the poor before they
were up, and a sort of intuition guided her in her
care for the sick. She gave her own meal one day
to a beggar in place of a piece of hard crust some one
had given him, saying quite simply, We must give
nothing to God but what is good." She died at the
age of 32, expressing but one regret that of not
having sufficiently served the poor; but one desire
that of serving them still, if God would give her life;
and but one fear that of having found too much joy
in her sufferings.

Thus, according to the testimony of St. Vincent,
we find elect souls, and souls truly generous in all

* Conference on the virtues of Jeanne d Allemagne, written by
Mile. Le Gras, 1644.

The first to -make their Vows. 205

the extent of the term, among those poor girls, who
often knew not how to read, much less to write, and
to whom Mile. Le Gras was often obliged to teach
the Pater and Credo, article by article, before show
ing them how to bleed a vein or dress a wound.
They were only, as he said, " village girls ; God hav
ing chosen to form their company from the same ma
terial He made use of in founding His Church." But
"had they lived in the time of St. Jerome, this great
doctor would have written their lives to such advan
tage that we would have been in admiration of the
greatest number among them." " They are the
Saints," he would repeat. " What benedictions and
what beautiful examples they have left !" Some of
them remained quite simple and natural, it is true, like
little Sister Marguerite Laurence, who related in
genuously that, having a desire to see the follies of the
fair as she was passing, she took hold of her cross and
said to God, " You are more beautiful than all that!"
And they were all so attached to their vocation that
they would rather be crucified or cut in pieces than
suffer the least thing that might weaken its spirit.
Those who were of good families, " the smaller num
ber at that time," adopted the rules and usages of
the company not less courageously than the others.
" We have a young lady of good position and accus
tomed to the best attire, but she makes no objection
to changing her dress," writes Mile. Le Gras.*

* Sr. Marguerite, perhaps, whose mother wrote her an admirable
letter about this time " Such as I would wish to write my daughter,

206 Life of Mile. Lc Gras.

It was they who edified St. Vincent so much when
he met them in the street, carrying the pot of broth
or a box of vegetables to the sick, and " with such
modest gait," he added, " that when I asked one
to whom she had just spoken, Sir, she said, I did
not take notice/

We might multiply these details, but they are only
flowers which they scattered by the way; our duty

had I one," said Mile. Le Gras. We extract the following: "My
daughter, I was greatly consoled to hear of your perseverance in the
fervor of your resolutions and your joy at changing your wordly gar
ments for the dress of the holy poverty of a slave of Jesus Christ,
which will ornament you more than the satin and brocade of the
world, if your soul is always decked in the virtues worthy of the
habit of penance, humility, patience, obedience, and, above all, the
holy fear and love of God. Love with all your heart this vile servi
tude and much despised slavery to which you have willingly aban
doned yourself at the feet of Jesus crucified, which are the poor to
whom you are willingly the handmaid for the rest of your life. Often
recall your first fervor, and when you feel yourself relenting or growing
cold communicate, with the permission of the saintly Superioress, to
rewarm and reanimate in your heart the first fervor and the fire you
displayed when you left us, your father and me; for that is the secret
of secrets in the ways of God. Know, my child, that the cross of our
adorable Saviour, with whom you wish to be crucified, was orna
mented with three principal stones contempt, labor, and sorrow.
These are the three principal stones of perfection, which I beg you,
for the love of God and His Holy Mother, to desire and seek after as
the greatest joy and glory to which you can arrive. Ah, how happy
am I to have borne in my bosom a daughter whom I shall see glorious
in heaven for having, in imitation of her Master Jesus, loved to be de
spised and contemned by all creatures, and to have borne the most
painful labors and piercing sorrows of mind and heart!" (Arch, of
the Mission.)

M. Portail is appointed Director. 207

now is to admire in the labor of all the Divine hand,
which developed the growing work and placed it on
a continually strengthening foundation.

The year 1642 the period in which the company
first made holy vows was also marked by the adop
tion of divers measures destined to render discipline
more exact and the organization more complete.
The most important of these was the nomination of
a director. M. Portail, of whom we have already
spoken, was associated in all the works of St. Vincent
from the commencement of his apostleship. His
first disciple, then his first companion, he had now
become his right arm, his other self, and the general as
sembly of the Priests of the Mission, held in October,
elected him first assistant and monitor. The choice of
the Saint naturally fell on him. Long initiated in
the designs of the founder, whom he often accom
panied to the parlor conferences at St. Lazarus, no
one was more suitable to unfold the ideas set forth
in these verbal instructions, and to conserve their
spirit in the outline of rules just confided to him.*

This was not the only help given to Mile. Le Gras,
for soon after she received from St. Vincent s hand
her first assistant. This was a Parisian, Julienne
Loret, twenty-three years old, originally belonging
to St. Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, who, as her companions
said, " in a small body possessed a large soul." f Her

* Letter of M. Portail to Mile. Le Gras, March 18, 1646, and of
Mile. Le Gras to M. Portail, May u, 1646.
f Conference upon the virtues Sr. Julienne Loret, 1699.

208 Life of Mile. Lc Gras.

mind was calm and judicious, her character firm,
" she spoke little and very justly," and without any
noise adhered to her decision. As skilful to write
out a Conference as to compose a remedy or dress
a wound, delicate of conscience and energetic in
action, cutting to the quick when necessary, she man
aged her time so well that she thought with sim
plicity there were no accounts to be rendered one day
on that score, and she would be satisfied to remain on
earth could she there be occupied every instant with
God, faithful to her favorite device Love or death.
To this first officer St. Vincent joined a treasurer
and dispenser. Thus a council became constituted,
whom he charged to learn how to treat an affair,
to propose, to discuss, examining the pros and cons,
so as to arrive at certain sure conclusions.*

This more complete organization seemed to call
for some material improvement that Mile. Le Gras
very much desired. Unfortunately the house was
small, and to enlarge it funds were wanting. They
had to be satisfied with making a parlor of one room,
without the addition of a grating, however, lest in
process of time they might be tempted to turn the
company into religious,f which, said the founder,

* Unpublished Conference, June 28, 1646.

f Religious, viz., into a religious Order. We have said elsewhere
that all the Orders of women were cloistered at that time Shut in
behind a grating, the Sisters of Charity would have destroyed their
work. For this reason St. Vincent said to them, "If any one ask,
Are you religious ? answer, No. Not that you do not esteem them,

The Dress of the first Sisters. 209

would only be "the work of bad minds," and quite
contrary to what God requires. But when they
thought of a special place for the newly arrived,
a kind of novitiate, they had to abandon the idea.
It was decided at least that they should assemble at
an appointed hour and receive information and in
struction from Sr. Julienne, whose renown for wisdom
had spread abroad so that persons from outside came
to consult her. " They were," said Mile. Le Gras,
"young plants whom the Lord had placed in His
garden ; it was necessary to water and cultivate them
with care."

Nothing had been formally regulated with re
gard to their costume. The first Daughters of
Charity, originally from the environs of Paris, had
preserved the clothing then in usage with the com
mon people ;* viz., a dress ordinarily of a gray
color, leaving the sleeves of the chemise to be seen
closed at the wrist, and a little head-band of white
linen, which hid the hair. The young girls of the
province, who were asked no other dowry than the
price of their fii;st habit, were obliged to adopt this
costume for the sake of uniformity. f Some of them,

but to be religious you must be enclosed, and then you could not
serve the poor." (Instructions to the Sisters going to Nantes.)

*In the approbation given by the Cardinal Legate, June 8, 1668, it
is said: "The Sisters, called of Charity, having resolved by Divine
inspiration to live together in community, without, however, quitting
the secular habit. ..."

f They had also to be furnished with a sum equivalent to their fare to
Paris, in case they did not persevere and had to return to their homes.

210 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

who complained of not having the face sufficiently
covered from the cold and heat, petitioned to add
a little black veil, but the petition was rejected.
The only addition permitted (and only to those resid
ing in the country) was a head-dress of white linen,
called corncttc* over the head-band. This was
worn at that time by the peasantry in the Isle of
France. f

With the exception of this indulgence, there was
nothing to distinguish the Sisters of the province
from those of the mother-house, whose usages, cus
toms, and diet had in a measure the force of law.
Thus, little by little, the work took a definite form,
and " Providence blessed it with a commencement of
order and foundation," J while at the same time He
multiplied exteriorly the most evident signs of His
Divine protection. This double manifestation was
not unnoticed by the founders, in whose letters and
conversations we are permitted to admire, with them,
the Divine goodness watching over the Daughters
even in the accomplishment of their humblest duties.
At one time a young Sister washing linen in the river
near the Hotel Dieu falls into the rushing water, but
is taken out unhurt. Another time a Sister was in a
house when it fell and buried forty persons beneath

* Letter of Mile. Le Gras to M. Portail, Aug. 13, 1646.

f Notes and manuscripts of the Congregation in Spain (Arch, of
the Mission). Such is the origin of the cornette, which was definitely
determined to be worn by the whole community, in 1685.

\ Unpublished Conference, June 28, 1646.

Accidents and Divine Protection. 2 1 1

the ruins.* The Sister, however, remained unhurt,
standing quietly on the only step of the staircase that
was not crushed. The people in the street reached
up a pole on which she hung her soup-pot, and then,
trusting herself to Providence, she jumped into the
cloaks that were held out for her. She trembled a
little, but continued on her way to the sick. "Ah ! my
daughters," said St. Vincent when relating this fact
to her companions, "what reasons have you not to
trust in God ! We read in history of a man being
killed in the open field by the weight of a tortoise
which an eagle dropped on his head, and to-day we
see a Daughter of Charity emerge without a scratch
from the ruins of a house overturned to the very
foundation. Is not this a sensible proof by which
God lets us know that they are dear to Him as the
apple of His eye? O my daughters, rest assured
that, provided you preserve this confidence in your
hearts, God will preserve you wherever you may be."
Another day Mile. Le Gras escaped from death
in so striking a manner that she has left the record
of it to the community. It was the eve of Pentecost
in the year 1644. She was preparing for the next
day by finishing a retreat, when she heard something
crack in the floor. She was not disposed to pay any
attention to it, but, yielding to the wish of an old Sis
ter, she arose to leave the apartment, and had gone as
far as the door when the beams broke and the floor

* During a visit she was making to a sick person in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain.

2 1 2 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

gave way entirely.* When St. Vincent heard what
had happened, he set no bounds to his thanksgiving
to God ; but he wrote a notef immediately to his
spiritual daughter, recalling the walls of Jericho and
the answer of our Lord concerning the man born
blind, telling her to be very careful not to consider as
a chastisement an accident in which the Divine mercy
shone with so much lustre. This advice was very op
portune, for Mile. Le Gras and her Daughters were
very much frightened at the danger she had been in.
We read her gratitude to-day in the little notes she
took in which she sums up the mysterious lessons
taught her by this event. " It seems to me," she
writes, " that I ought to endeavor to remember it all
my life, and to thank God for my interior sentiments
at that time." That crash brought to her mind the
great interior crushing which she experienced when,
twenty years before, " God granted her light and
understanding, day by day, on the subject of her
three great uncertainties and anxieties which over
whelmed her," and she concludes that the whole
company should have a great devotion for the Feast
of Pentecost, on which God gave to Moses the law
of fear, to the Church the law of grace, to her heart
the law of love, and to the whole congregation so

*The Ladies of Charity from the Hotel-Dieu had been assembled
for this day with Mile. Le Gras, and St. Vincent would have been with
them in the same hall had not affairs of importance called him else
where.

f Letter 403.

Accidents and Divine Protection. 2 1 3

signal a mark of assistance." She then expresses a
desire that every year her Daughters would spend
in retreat the time between Ascension and Pente
cost, waiting, in union with the Blessed Virgin and
the Apostles, the coming of the Holy Spirit. This
voice of God," as she designates the grace bestowed
upon her, teaches her above all that total depend
ence on Divine Providence is one of the dispositions
in which she should maintain the company. Follow
ing up an idea that we can only understand imperfect
ly, " God," she says, " has a purpose that we know not,
and He requires, to accomplish that purpose, certain
efforts from one and the other. I hope His goodness
will make known something for the solid establish
ment of this little family to our honored Father, in
whom I seem to see the interior operations of grace,
and also in the souls of some of our Sisters." Then
her thoughts collect themselves on this wish, which
we find entire : " I would wish with my whole heart
to give and acquire much glory for God, that we
may correspond with His design in permitting what
has happened."

Glory given to God, the solid establishment of the
company, and the union of the whole family, is the
most ardent desire of the foundress; it is also the
grand and beautiful panorama which successive
events will unfold to our view.

CHAPTER XL

16461648.

St. Vincent and Mile. Le Gras solicit an Approbation for the Company
The Sisters are asked for in Brittany The Approbation granted,

but the Articles astray Divisions and Difficulties at Nantes

Changes at the Foundling House Celebrated Peroration of St.
Vincent de Paul.

ilLE the little company was growing
under the eye of God, the founder and his
faithful co-operator decided to ask from
ecclesiastical authority an official recogni
tion of its existence and the erection of it into a con
fraternity. Ever united in action, one doing nothing
without the other, they shared this work also. St. Vin
cent took on himself to draft the request which Mile.
Le Gras was to present to the prelate who then gov
erned the Church in Paris.* Some clays after the
Saint wrote to Louise : " Here is the memorial ; it con
tains three points : first, the ways of Providence in in
stituting the Daughters ; second, their mode of life to
the present time ; third, the rules of their association. I
have given the first two, that Mgr. and his colleagues
may be informed of everything by their perusal, and
I suppress a number of things I might add about

*Gobillon, p. 161. This prelate was Mgr. J. Francis de Gondy.

An Approbation for the Company. 215

you. Let us leave to our Lord to tell that to
every one and hide ourselves."

The document has been preserved to us. We might
call it a chapter of the foundation related by the
founder ; thus we cannot do better than quote a part
of it and abridge the rest. The Saint commences by
recalling the origin of the numerous charities estab
lished in the diocese, then the necessity of assisting
the ladies by some girls of good will. " These girls,"
he said, " have been fitted for this work by a virtu
ous widow, Mile. Le Gras, who kept them in her
house, and during the thirteen or fourteen years
since the work commenced God has so blessed it
that in every parish there are three or four girls as
sisting the sick or instructing poor children. They
live at the expense of the confraternity of the parish;
but so frugally that one hundred livres and some
times twenty-five crowns suffices for food and clothing
the whole year. Three are employed by the Ladies of
Charity at the Hotel-Dieu, ten or twelve at the Hos
pital of the Foundlings, two or three assist the galley-
slaves, without counting those who are filling similar
offices in Angers, Richelieu, Saint-Germain-en-Laye,
St. Denis, and other places of the country. As they
are constantly asked for, Mile. Le Gras is keeping
others in her house, ordinarily about thirty, who
while receiving instruction from her on their life and
calling, are employed, some to instruct the little girls
of the parish who come to the school, others to at
tend the sick or in the different duties of the house.

216 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

They maintain themselves by their labor, the alms of
charitable persons, and an annual revenue of two
thousand livres allowed them by the king and queen
and also by the Duchess of Aiguillon." St. Vincent
here dilates on the good results which follow spirit
ually from the corporal assistance given to the sick
and dying " a most certain mark of vocation," he
took care to subjoin, and at the same time said nothing
of what did not come under the consent and permis
sion of the prelate. " But since works which regard
the service of God generally finish with those who
commence them unless there is some spiritual
bond between the persons employed in them," he
asks the archbishop of Paris " to approve the rule
by which they have lived to the present and propose
to live for the future, and to constitute them into a
Company under the name of Daughters and Widows,
Servants of the Poor, of Charity." He added to his
request an abridged copy of the rule itself.

Several months passed without an answer from
Mgr. de Gondy. This circumstance gives us a
correspondence between Mile. Le Gras and M.
Portail, then on a tour through the provinces of
the west. Profiting of his journey, this Director
of the Daughters of Charity was seeing about
placing them in the Hotel-Dieu at Mans. This
seemed an easy matter, thanks to the good reputa
tion of the missionaries and the watchful care of the
administrators. The hospital was attended by nurses ;
but it was hoped that they could be gained to

The Sisters leave Mans. 2 1 7

the practice of the rule* by the good example of the
Sisters chosen to be the foundation stones. These
sisters, "with affection for doing good" delighted St.
Vincent, especially the one who, with 4< heart all
charity," was Sister-Servant Jeanne Lepeintre.

Vain hopes ! A month was scarcely over when
the most absurd stories were circulated in the
town. It was said that when postulants entered the
community they were sent to the new colony
founded in Canada, where the Duchess of Aiguillon
was bestowing her fortune, and it was whispered
about that they would be married to the Canadian
savages for the purpose of propagating Catholicity.
But there arose what was worse than these foolish
reports ; viz., disagreements among the authorities
who ruled the house. From all these facts, the de
tails of which are wanting, it was decided that the
Sisters should be recalled. They left Mans, there
fore, with the serenity and meekness which they
had maintained through all their difficulties. "The
money and time were well spent, "f said M. Portail,
" if they did no other good in that place than to
preach by their modesty and instruct by their un
alterable calmness in such tempests." The gates of
Mans were closed against them, as the Gospel;]: re
lates those of Samaria were against our Lord. But

* Rule drawn up for the Sisters going to Mans. (Arch, of the
Mission).

f To Mile. Le Gras, June 4, 1664.
\ Letter 9-52-55.

218 Life of Mile. Lc Gras.

those of a large neighboring- city were open to receive
them. The managers, or, as they were called, the
" Fathers of the Poor," in the hospital of St. Rene,
Nantes, having heard of the Sisters at Angers, wrote
to St. Vincent, begging for six of his Daughters, on
the same conditions. The Saint granted them with
joy ; and Mile. Le Gras, whom he always advised
to " imitate Solomon by putting fine stones in the
foundation," took particular care in her selection of
these. She proposed their names for his approval in
the council.

The choice of Sister-Servant took place some time
after, in the midst of the assembly, and was the occa
sion of a scene which we shall relate in all its simpli
city. The council had assembled, and Elizabeth
Martin, without knowing what was going on, was sent
for by St. Vincent. He told her to be seated, and
then asked her why she had entered the company.
" Sir," she said, "it was to do the will of God."
" And do you wish to do it still ?" he asked ; and
turning quite pleasantly to M. Almeras,* whom he
had brought with him, he said, " Well, God be
praised, my daughter; He now gives you a fine
chance!" He then told her that they were going to
open a new mission in one of the largest cities of the
kingdom, and that Providence had chosen her for
Sister-Servant. " What shall we give Sister Eliza
beth for her journey?" he asked, while she remained

* This was his future successor the child baptized at the church
of Saint Gervais the day of the marriage of Mile. Le Gras,

The Sisters are wanted in Brittany. 2 1 9

mute with astonishment; "each one must give her
something. Let us see. What virtue can we give
her ?" The first interrogated, wished for her com
panion the love of God ; another, wished her love
for the poor; Mile. Le Gras, the cordial support of
her Sisters ; and M. Almeras, invited to make his
present also, wished her " gay patience." "See what
riches, my daughter, of which I wish you the pleni
tude," said St. Vincent; " but what I wish for you
especially is to do the will of God, which consists
not only in doing what our superiors prescribe,
though this is a sure way to arrive at it, but still
more in corresponding with all the interior inspira
tions that God will send us."

The rebuff at Mans, and the thought that her
Daughters might not find even at Nantes the sup
port of the missionaries, induced Mile. Le Gras to
conduct this new colony herself into Brittany.
She knew in advance that this determination would
cause much sorrowful surprise to those who re
mained in Paris ; therefore she wished before leaving
to give them written instructions, in which we read
the acceptance of the Divine Will. " I recall to you,"
she says in this note, "the compact we made to
gether never to gainsay the guidance of Divine Pro
vidence, and to abandon ourselves to it entirely. Let
us take this journey, you and I, as putting into
practice this promise so often renewed." *

* Note entitled : " Advice before a journey,"

220 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Then entering into the minutiae of particular
duties, she advised Jeanne Lepeintre, the Sister
named to hold her place as Sister-Servant, to give
exact account to the other two officers every fort
night; to decide on no important matter without the
advice of M. Vincent or M. Lambert,* who had
been appointed Superior in the absence of M.
Portail. Each Sister in the house received a charge,
and with it advice how to accomplish it. Some were
named to visit the Sisters in the parishes every eight
or ten days. This they were to do " in view of God
and holy obedience, and to bring to this duty of
affection and cordiality the great meekness of the
Son of God." On the eve of her departure she
went to receive the blessing of St. Vincent, and
as she expressed in her humility a fear of committing
many faults, he invited her to write an account of
herself on the way. Happy thought! for to her
journal thus kept we owe the details of the longest
journey of this saintly foundress. Her journal is
preserved intact.

The little company numbered nine persons when
Louise and her companions mounted the Orleans
coach, July 26, 1646: the six Sisters destined for
Nantes ; Sister Turgis, who was going with them part
of her way to Richelieu; and another who accom
panied Mile. Le Gras to return with her to Paris.

* M. Lambert-aux-Couteaux, born ini6o6, in the diocese of Amiens,
was the eleventh to enter into the institute, 1629. He established the
Daughters of Charity at Richelieu and in Poland, and died 1683.

Arrival of the Sisters in Brittany. 221

" We were quite gay," the latter writes, "and by the
grace of God we had enough to talk about." She
relates that as they approached a town or village,
the travellers were sure to salute the good angels of
the place and beg them to redouble their care over
the souls confided to them. When they passed before
a church they adored the Blessed Sacrament and
invoked the patrons of the sanctuary. Arriving at
the resting-place, one of them went in search of their
modest repast, which they wished to have by them
selves and not at the common table. The others
meantime found the church, then went to salute
their "dear masters" the poor, either at the hospital
or in houses where there were sick, and distributed
pictures, beads, and Catechisms to the children.

Thus they made the journey, doing good. They
passed through Orleans, where they left the coach and
took the boat. Through Tours, Saumur, Le Pont-de-
Ce, "where they were happy enough to be chased from
the inn for wishing to abstain from meat on Friday,"
and through Angers, where they stopped some days
to the great joy of the Sisters in the hospital. At
length, after a voyage which the low tide of the Loire
made longer and more fatiguing than usual, they
landed in the Breton city, on Thursday, August 8.

Mile. Le Gras wished their arrival to be private;
but they had been anxiously expected, and the
crowds, already more than once disappointed, were
now so dense and closely packed along the landing
that it was with difficulty the Sisters could make

222 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

their way to the nearest church as was their custom.
Great and small rejoiced at their coming. The ad
ministrators gave them full power in the hospital;
the ladies of the city came to bid them welcome;*
and several convents of religious expressed a desire
to see them, as also their habit. The crowd of visit
ors did not diminish during the following days. They
admired the good order and cleanliness (something
new) of the wards. The meals of the poor and sick,
served by Daughters of Charity, was such an inter
esting sight that the number who came to witness
it made the duty still more difficult for the Sisters.

This unusual success surprised Mile. Le Gras and
filled her with gratitude. "I know not what will
happen in that establishment where I have not
yet seen the thorns," she wrote to St. Vincent,f
" but so much praise from every one is incredible.
May God grant me love strong enough to see in this
the care of Divine Providence over us! Oh, how I
should sing loud His praise! But I must stop short
and content myself with supplicating the heavenly
choirs to render fitting glory to God ; and you, our
honored Father, to whom God makes known His
guidance over us, to supply for our defects."

* " I believe there was not a single lady of rank who did not come
to see them; even ladies came on purpose from the country. It is
owing to your charity that we receive such honor here. Do not
deceive them about me; they mistake me for a great lady. Oh, how
1 shall burn one day, and what confusion shall be mine!" (Letter of
Mile. Le Gras to St. Vincent, Aug. 21, 1646.)

f Aug. n, 1646.

The Approbation is Granted. 223

Almost three weeks passed and the act of establish
ment was not yet signed. This time seemed all the
longer for Louise by the serious illness of her son in
Paris. The morning of the day she received this news
she was incited by some secret presentiment* to make
a complete abandonment of this child of many tears
into the hands of Him who wishes to be called
"Our Father." Her confidence was not deceived,
and the young Michel, boarding with the physician
and visited by St. Vincent, was out of danger before
she was able to leave Nantes. The first part of the
journey was by water, but " the wind and waves
were contrary," writes Mile. Le Gras in her recital,
"which gave us two or three good frights;" hence,
notwithstanding the displeasure and the expense,
the rest of the route was accomplished by land.

Great was the joy of her Daughters in Paris to
find themselves once more under her direction ; and
the most sanguine expectations of all seemed realized
when it was known that the Archbishop had at
length acceded to the request of St. Vincent, and
that his coadjutor, Cardinal de Retz, had approved
the existence and rules of the Daughters of Charity,f
and that the king for his part had consented to
grant them letters patent. A singular circumstance
happened, and one disastrous in appearance, but
Providence made known the design of it later on.

* Letter of Mile. Le Gras to St. Vincent, Aug. 21, 1646.
fOct. 20, 1646.

224 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

The Procurator-General* had given the items of
St. Vincent s petition to his secretary to have them
registered in the Parliament. The secretary put
them astray, and died soon after. Every search was
made for the missing papers, but in vain ; and St.
Vincent was informed that he must write his peti
tion and commence proceedings all over again.

We may believe that this unforeseen accident was
a great disappointment to Louise ; for her advanced
age and that of the Saint made them both desire to
have their work established on a definite base as
soon as possible. Nevertheless she testified no regret ;
she even rejoiced interiorly at the trial; and this is
easily explained from the fact that St. Vincent, in
the copy of rules submitted to Mgr. de Gondy
had given the direction of the confraternity into the
hands of the Archbishop of Paris. So scrupulously
respectful was he of the rights of the episcopate
that he was willing to be blotted out himself, and
all belonging to him, rather than encroach in the
slightest particular. An ecclesiastic chosen by the
prelate, he said, would be designated Superior, and
they would obey him in all that appertained to
their conduct. The project had been adopted with
out modification, and the founder himself was
charged with the government of the company which
owed its existence to him. It might be asked what
would happen if, after his death, a strange ruler

*M. deMeliand.

Mile. Le Gras asks the Apostolic Benediction. 225

succeeding him, the bond uniting the double family
should be severed. Such, indeed, was the thought
which weighed on the soul of Mile. Le Gras. She
foresaw the changes in the rule and spirit of the
company that a different government would be likely
to effect; thus, when she heard of the papers being
astray, she did not hesitate to implore St. Vincent
to correct this point of the first compiling. " In
the name of God," she writes, " permit nothing to
transpire that in the least point would withdraw the
company from the direction which God has given
it; for you may be quite sure this will happen
when you are no more : the sick poor will not be
attended to, and thus the will of God will be no
longer amongst us."*

This conviction strengthened every day ; experi
ence lent it vigor, and she gave it expression with
an exactness, perspicuity, and sometimes with a tone
of authority quite unusual to her. But if the
loss of the letters of approbation obliged St. Vincent
to new formalities, it was not the less true that the
company was morally recognized and had its place
in the sunshine of the Church. Mile. Le Gras be
lieved herself authorized to claim favors from Rome.
M. Portail f was about to be sent by Vincent to the

* Letter without date probably 1646.

f M. Portail was sent to Rome in April, 1647, to visit the missions
established there some years previous by the bounty of the Duchess
of Aiguillon. He there fell sick, and, according to the expression of
Mile. Le Gras, "on leaving the Eternal City he mistook Paradise

226 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Eternal City, where Louise had often wished to go
herself, but her age and continually increasing infir
mities made her now abandon that hope, and she
profited of this occasion to have M. Portail solicit
for herself and for all the Daughters of Charity a
plenary indulgence at the hour of death. *

In spite of the absence of the ambassador through
whom these sorts of requests were transmitted, the
attempt was crowned with success, and M. Portail
hastened to inform Mile. Le Gras. f He wrote,
" Although his Holiness does not generally grant
this indulgence to so many persons at a time, yet

for Paris." We have several letters exchanged between them at
this time. In one of these, dated from the Abbey of Saint-Sauveur,
fifteen miles from " this desert, where the air is more temperate and
more healthy," M. Portail recommends himself humbly to the pray
ers of the community, for, he said, " having lived in holy Rome does
not make every one a saint."

* Letter of Mile. Le Gras to M. Portail, June 21, 1647.

"[ December i, 1647. Some years later, towards 1652, Mile. Le
Gras begged the Apostolic Benediction through M. Berthe, Priest
of the Mission, as is proved by the following written by her :

"Louise de Marillac, twenty-seven years a widow, Servant of
Jesus Christ and of His members the poor, in will if not in effect;
deeply attached by obedience to the Holy Father; a Roman Catho
lic, and on account of a long-cherished desire to receive at least
once during life the Apostolic Benediction, she begs most hum
bly M. Berthe, Priest of the Mission, to present her in spirit at the
feet of the present Holy Father, true vicegerent of Jesus Christ,
by the zeal his Holiness displays for the faith of the Church. She
begs this to obtain grace from God to do His will in all things for the
rest of her days. In return for this charity she will consider herself
obliged to pray to God for his Holiness."

Illness of Mile. Le Gras. 227

the consideration of your employment in regard to
the sick poor induced him to depart from his usual
custom. All your Sisters living at present will share
in this favor." He then takes occasion to explain
the word mulier, which in the Court at Rome means
woman or girl; he also tells her that, as an acknowl
edgment of the part they take in the " charity," the
missionaries who reside in Rome will celebrate, each
one, a mass on the tomb of St. Peter and make the
tour of the seven Basilican churches for the intention
of the Ladies of Charity, especially for those among
them who so often sent by letters and messages to
beg that favor.

The assistance of prayer was indeed more necessary
now than ever to Mile. Le Gras ; fora time of labor and
suffering had succeeded the period of silence and rec
ollection mentioned in the preceding chapter. Physi
cal sufferings, divisions in part of her flock, difficulties
in her works, besides fears arising from public troubles
everything seemed to come at once. Her health
had been so good on her return from Nantes that she
was able to write back, " I am so well that I have
a great mind to do nothing else than run over the
country, provided there was any good to be done."
Now, however, she had fallen again into her " infir
mities and laziness," as she called her sickness,
have been a long time sick and even in danger, as
they say," we read in a letter of Jan. I, 1647; and a

* To Sr. Jeanne Lepeintre, Nantes, 1646.

228 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

little later, " I had not recovered from my sickness
of the winter when I had another and more danger
ous attack." A violent headache was the result of a
three weeks journey to the country ; and soon after,
grief at the loss of one of her Daughters brought on
a fever. St. Vincent wrote : " To see her one would
suppose that she had just arisen from the grave, so
weak and pale she appears. She has no life but
what she receives from grace, being naturally dead
for the last ten years. But her soul rules all in her,
and if obedience had not stopped her you would see
her still busy visiting her Daughters and laboring
with them everywhere."

In her family at this very time was a little group
needing her presence most especially. If she could
rely on the " wise government" of Julienne Loret and
let her rule the community in the Faubourg Saint
Denis, at Nantes the tares seemed to be stifling the
good grain.* Discord was reigning among the Sis
ters ; each one had her party either inside or outside
the house, and the ordinary authorities seemed pow
erless to restore order. Unable to go herself, Mile.
Le Gras sent in her place Sister Jeanne Lepeintre,
whom she thought " very much attached to the will
of God, and much enlightened with regard to her
duties," and whose influence, " mild and judicious,"
would suffice to bring back every one to the right
path. At the same time, Mile. Le Gras sent to her

* Letter of Mile. Le Gras to the Sisters at Nantes, March 8, 1647.

Troubles at Nantes. 229

Daughters a long- letter from St. Vincent " which she
could not read without emotion," she writes, " so af
flicted \vas she at the thought of so many faults
committed ;" and to give efficacy to her advice she
humbles herself. " Do not think I say this to frighten
you, or that I am addressing you alone. I say it to
myself, and to all who, like me, have made a bad use
of our vocation. Oh, how often have I committed
the faults I suspect in you ! What cause of fear
have I not that my bad example has left fatal impres
sions on your minds ! Ask pardon of God for me,
and do better than you have ever seen me do." :

The arrival of M. Lambert, the advice he gave,
along with the removal of some of the Sisters, seemed
to re-establish peace among the Sisters of Charity ;
but the end of the trouble was not yet. The wind
of tribulation began to blow from without, and diffi
culties multiplied. On one side, the managers of the
hospital required duties contrary to their agreement ;
on the other hand, the bishops, misunderstanding
the spirit of the work, wished to give them the char
acter of a religious Order ; while the municipality
accused the Sisters of appropriating the property of
the poor and ruining the hospital.f Thus the foun
dation at Nantes, which was at first the most promis
ing, now seemed on the point of ruin.

* " Avis laisses a nos tres-cheres Soeurs de la Charite, Servantes des
pauvres de 1 hopital de Nantes, par Lambert, Pretre de la Mission,
1 annee, 1648." (Arch, of the Mission.)

f Letter of St. Vincent to Mile. Le Gras, Nantes, April 28, 1649.

230 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

i

Although not ignorant of the designs of Providence
in permitting trials at the beginning of nearly every
religious undertaking, yet the Mother shared the
sorrow of her Daughters. " How it pains me to
know that you suffer!" she wrote ; " but what do I
say ? I ought rather to envy you, since it is for God."
She recommended to them especially to suffer in
silence, and, " without wishing to conquer, to accept
calumny as did their Divine Master, who lived and
died in peace in the midst of His calumniators ; to
practise their rules exactly ; if not, they would only
be like a broken chain." *

" Be strong, Daughters," she said to them on
another occasion ; " are you not Daughters of Char
ity? But Charity loves and suffers all things."f To
Jeanne Lepeintre : " The world is babbling against
you ; it is only the Evil Spirit playing his game ; he
will gain nothing provided that you gather your
selves beneath the cross like chickens beneath the
hen when frightened by the hawk." As there was
serious question of their departure from Nantes, she
writes again: " They wish to send you off, but nothing
can happen except for your good. . . . Going out, you
will only have to shake the dust from your feet, and
one day we shall bless God for this persecution."^:

* To Sr. Jeanne Lepeintre at Nantes, July 20, 1647.

f Letter, not dated, the only one, we believe, bearing the signature:
" Louise de Marillac, Daughter of Charity, most unworthy Servant of
the Poor."

\ To Sr. Jeanne Lepeintre, June 15, 1649.

Changes at the Foundlings house. 231

The future reserved for the poor Sisters an un
expected joy in a visit from St. Vincent, who was
obliged to travel into Brittany the following year.*
The mischief continued still a long time, and Sister
Jeanne, sent for a few months to Nantes, was obliged
to remain six years.f Mile. Le Gras had the pleasure
of seeing an end to the trouble before she died. " It
is not," she said, as if to excuse herself, " that I under
rate the designs of God mingled in thorns and roses ;
but after having suffered so much, I love to see you
enjoy that peace and meekness which always are
found in the service of the poor when performed
without regard to other affairs, and I hope that peace
will add to your cordiality. ^

The critical situation of the Sisters at Nantes was
not the only thorn which pierced her heart at this
time. Another establishment, older and not less
dear, seemed equally in danger. We mean the
Foundling Asylum, the history of which we shall re
trace a few steps.

We have already stated that for a long time their
revenue was only equivalent to fourteen hundred
francs. St. Vincent obtained from the king four
thousand French livres annually three thousand for
the support of the children, and one thousand for the
Sisters to be raised on the Estate of Gonnesse.

* In April, 1649.

f We have forty letters from Mile. Le Gras to Jeanne Lepeintre at
this time.

JTo Sr. Jeanne Lepeintre at Nantes, July 26, 1651.

232 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Afterwards, from the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria,
he obtained another eight thousand livres on the five
farms.* All these subsidies were not sufficient, how
ever, to cover expenses, which in 1644 had exceeded
40,000 livres ; and the building occupied by the chil
dren having become too small, the Ladies of Char
ity were petitioning the queen for the Chateau de
Bicetre, f where, towards the month of July, 1647,^;
they installed their young protege s.

From the first, Mile. Le Gras was not pleased
with this arrangement. She feared the expense
necessary to support a building one half of which
would not be occupied in ten years ; the distance
from Paris; the coming and going of the Sisters,
which would inevitably occasion distraction and
fatigue ; finally, the difficulty of transporting the
children on account of bad roads and the nature of
the ground. The facts, which justified her fore
thought, singularly confirmed her repugnance. " It
was not without reason," we read in one of her
letters, " that I feared the abode at Bicetre."|| And

* Letters patent of 1642, 1643. (Arch. Nat. 6160.)

f The Chateau de Bicetre, built under Charles V. by Jean, Duke
of Berry, had been restored under the preceding reign to serve as a
hospital for invalid soldiers.

\ From this place we have many letters of Mile. Le Gras to St.
Vincent, dated 1647. Abelly seems to mistake when he says it was
after the assembly of "Charity," 1648, that the ladies obtained the
Chateau de Bicetre.

Letter to St. Vincent, Aug. 19.

| Ibid. July 1647.

Trouble at the Foundlings ho^^se. 233

she relates the embarrassment of the Daughters of
Charity when the ladies required them to occupy
small unhealthy rooms and allowed them no chap
lain. " They wanted our Sisters to go to Mass at
Gentilly ; meantime what would the children do,
and who would see to the work? I fear much that
we must quit the service of the little ones." This
was not all : " This magnificent place was supposed
to belong to the Foundlings ;" and the great rank of
the ladies who governed it* gave reason to consider
it richly endowed ; and as it is quite pleasant to
repose on the charity of others, alms became more
and more rare until they finally ceased altogether.

This situation of affairs weighed heavily on Louise
for some time, but it could not be prolonged. St.
Vincent, therefore, decided to call a general assem-
blyf of the Ladies of Charity. In this assembly,
and in presence of Mile. Le Gras, he proposed this
solemn question : " Must this work be continued or
should it be abandoned ?" Faithful to his rule of
examining the pros and cons of every question, he
represented to them on one side that, having con
tracted no engagement, they were free to leave off ;
but, on the other hand, it was well to consider the
good already accomplished and that which could
still be effected. At this point of the discourse, St.
Vincent, no longer able to control the emotion pent
up in his heart, burst forth into this celebrated pero-

* Letter to St. Vincent, Jan. 23, 1648. f In l6 4 8 -

234 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

ration : " Come now, ladies, compassion and charity
made you adopt these little creatures for your chil
dren. You have been their mothers according to
grace since they were forsaken by their mothers
according to nature. See now if you also can for
sake them. Cease to be their mothers and become
their judges: their life or death is in your hands.
I shall take your votes of suffrage : it is time to pro
nounce the decree, and find out if you will no longer
have mercy on them. They will live if you con
tinue your charitable care of them ; they must die
and inevitably perish if you abandon them."

The assembly answered by their tears. When
the emotion had subsided, the work was declared
necessary and to be continued at any price. But
as circumstances occurred we must relate them,
and we have to acknowledge that the zeal of the
ladies again grew cold, and the entire labor of the
work fell once more on Mile. Le Gras and her
Daughters. In several of her letters she remarks
with sorrow and almost fright : " It is pitiable that
these ladies trouble themselves so little. Do they
think we have enough to support the work, or
do they wish us to abandon it ?" *And elsewhere :
" These good ladies have not done what they could.
None of them has sent any money, f therefore there
is no corn and we must borrow ; there is no linen ;
twelve or fifteen children are without clothing ; sev-

* Letter to St. Vincent, Nov. 1649.
f The same.

Trouble at the Foundlings ho^tse. 235

eral others refuse the bottle, but there is not a cent
to put them out to nurse, and the poor people of
the neighborhood bring back the older children
before they are weaned : they were entrusted to
them and paid for in advance, but the people tire of
them. Debts, in fine, are increasing to such extent
that there is no hope of ever paying them."

The charity of Louise multiplied itself, and she ex
ercised no little ingenuity by reason of these difficult
ies. She had poor-boxes placed in the parishes, and
had the priests and preachers recommend the work ;
she suggested to the ladies to beg at the court,f and
also each one in her own neighborhood. She her
self begged from generous ladies and powerful
ministers, visited the Princess of Conde, and invoked
the pity of Chancellor Seguier. " One hundred
poor little creatures," she wrote, " are threatened
with not having bread during these feast-days.
Their necessities weigh heavy on my heart." The
Sisters spun, made bread and cooked food, which, on
account of the scarcity of provisions, sold at a high
price. They even took from their own subsistence ;
for in the time of greatest distress Mile. Le Gras
gave out the little she had on reserve ; and as they
were not to have money for some time, the whole
community was limited to one meal per day.

* To St. Vincent, Dec. 1649.

f Same date.

\ To Mme. de Lamoiguon, Nov. 15.

Nat. Lib. MS., f. 17391, p. 212 (Corresp. Seguier).

236 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

This neglect of the ladies in the Hotel-Dieu, whom
we have known to be at one time so generous, would
be inexplicable were we left in ignorance of circum
stances taking place at the time of which we treat,
and which we shall strive to set forth in the follow
ing chapter.

CHAPTER XII.

1649 1652.

Mile. Le Gras and her Daughters during the Fronde Civil War and
Charity The Sisters in Picardy ; in Champagne ; in the Beauce at
Paris Death of Mgr. Camus and of the Widow of President
Lamoignon Marriage of Michel Le Gras Birth of a Little
Daughter.

1HE PEACEFUL events we have recorded
most bring us to the threshold of one of
the stormy periods in our history. Interi
or quarrels were added to exterior strife,
discord, devastation. No evil seemed wanting at
the first Fronde, followed, alas ! by so many others,
more terrible, reaching to our own time. The nature
of our story does not permit us to dwell long on the
dismemberment of royalty ; but we cannot pass it
over in absolute silence.

Retired from public affairs as was the life of Mile.
Le Gras ; stranger as she was to passing events ;
knowing of peace and war, as she said herself, " only
what every one knew," yet it was impossible for her
not to be deeply moved by the effects of these public
agitations. The dramatic yet sorrowful spectacle
of a great city a prey to civil war, whole provinces
desolated by a foreign enemy, the poor made victims

238 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

of both, is what the Daughters of Charity were
destined too often to confront. Hence we may see
how God permitted their foundress to serve even in
this instance as a model for those who were to come
after her.

" Mazarin, equal to Richelieu in diplomacy, was
not his equal in the masterly genius necessary for
the interior administration of State affairs." Occu
pied incessantly in the care of himself, of aggran
dizing the estates and establishing the authority of
the kingdom, he paid less attention to the proper
guidance of the realm, and allowed abuses and dis
orders to be everywhere introduced. France was
exhausted ; taxation necessarily increased ; even pub
lic offices were sold to maintain four or five great
armies and a considerable fleet, while no victory
recorded could make the people forget the heavy
load weighing upon them. Hence Talon, the At
torney-General, was truly the organ of public opinion
when with severity he reminded the Queen that
" the honor of battles gained, the glory of provinces
conquered, could not support those who were in
want of bread." A riot which broke out in Paris
during a Te Dcum sung in honor of the victory of
Lens* justified these words, while it served as the
signal for trouble.

Anne of Austria, alarmed, and not without reason,
to see twelve hundred barricades in the streets of

* Aug. 26, 1648.

Pillage of Saint-Lazarus. 239

the capital and quite near her royal palace, sanctioned
all the political reforms proposed to her by the par
liament. But soon after, hoping to conquer resist
ance by the army of Flanders, which the treaty of
Westphalia empowered her to call to her aid, she
fled to Saint-Germain with her son, and the blockade
of Paris was begun. St. Vincent was frightened.
Agonized at the prospect of the crimes resulting
always from a war " more than civil" as Cardinal
Berulle calls it, he determined to take a step to which
his membership of the Council of Conscience* espe
cially entitled him. He followed at great risk to
Saint-Germain, and sought to influence the Queen
and the Cardinal; but he had the mortification to
find his advice refused. Mile. Le Gras was not
aware of this attempt on the part of St. Vincent.
Matthew Mol was the only person who was in
formed of it in advance ; but his departure was soon
noised abroad in Paris, and by one of those miscon
ceptions so frequent in times of commotion his in
tention was completely misconstrued. The people
rushed in tumult to the house of St. Lazarus, the
keys of which a member of parliament had previously
obtained under pretence of examining the corn. It
was literally sacked. Everything in the granary
was seized ; the wood-shed was set on fire ; six hun
dred men were for three days encamped in the

* This Council was established by the Queen in 1643, to treat of
ecclesiastical affairs. It was composed of Cardinal Mazarin, the
Chancellor, the Penitencier of Paris, and St. Vincent de Paul,

240 Life of Mile. Lc Gras.

buildings, where they racked and destroyed every
thing within their reach.

Louise, we know, lived opposite St. Lazare, whence
she never thought of fleeing. " I think you very
courageous to keep so well to your house," St. Vincent
wrote on the first news of the pillage, and then retired
to a little farm in the neighborhood of Etampes.*
The state of affairs was truly critical. The Sisters
of the villages near Paris took refuge in the mother-
house ; the foundlings had been transferred from
Bicetre with the nurses and the twelve Sisters who
took care of them. \ To find provisions for this un
expected host was no easy task, for everything edible
was dear and scarce, so that even the rich had not
enough for their need.J Mile. Le Gras had the great
est difficulty in procuring grain in sufficient quantity ;
sometimes it was necessary to have an escort of sol
diers to secure its safe arrival. This was not all : they
were in constant danger of being attacked either by a

* Frenville, which had been given him by the wife of the President of
Herse, and which depended on the parish of Puisseaux, where he had
established the Daughters of Charity. The letter is dated Feb. 4, 1649.

\ In April 1649 the Sisters returned to Bicetre to occupy the place
and cultivate the land, and in 1651 or 1652 the children were re
installed; but the air, too strong it seemed, did not agree with them,
and they were permanently brought back to Paris and placed at the
extremity of the Faubourg Saint-Lazarus. Little by little the ladies
ceased to take interest in the work, and, left exclusively to Mile. Le
Gras, it soon began to prosper.

\ Bread cost 24 sous the pound. (Histoire de Mile, de Lamoignon,
par le P. d Orleans.)

Illness of St. Vincent. 241

mob, always on the point of collecting, or by wicked
wretches too glad of the opportunity afforded by the
excitement of the times. Caution was observed, there
fore, in most minute details. The gates and doors had
to be always kept locked, and, besides, a light was kept
burning in the house, so as to be seen from the street ;*
in a word, they had be constantly on the qni vivc,
and Louise recommended to Julienne Loret and
Elizabeth Hellot, her assistants, to make sure there
were enough persons in the house to defend it in
case of attack, and to place the little they possessed
(their little community) in the greatest possible safety.
The weight of affairs and responsibilities rested
on her alone. M. Portail was at Marseilles, " de
tained there by Providence and obedience/ f and
St. Vincent, after visiting the Missions in the West,
encouraging on his way the Sisters of Nantes and
Angers, who had given him, he said, " more con
solation than anything in a long time," J fell sick at
Richelieu. " We are in great anxiety on account of
M. Vincent," wrote Mile. Gras the 6th of April, 1649,
to the Abbe Vaux, " having received no news of him
since the I4th of March, when he was in Mans. I
know well that he has been in Angers also, but since
not a word from any one, and the last we heard was
not from him nor any person near him. Oblige me

* Letters of Mile. Le Gras to Sisters Julienne Loret and Elizabeth
Hellot.

* Letter of M. Portail to Mile. Le Gras, Sept. 17, 1648.
\ Letter to Mile. Le Gras, April 15, 1649.

242 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

by letting- us hear from you what you know about
him." It was an additional trial for her to be de
prived of his support in these afflictions ; but pru
dence, by which the gift of God was manifest in her,*
never left her, and thus her wise government was
equal to all emergencies.

There was no good work interrupted. Barbara
Angiboust put up the beds of the hospital which had
been taken down for want of means to support them.
The parish Sisters continued their visits. Those who
were gardeners planted and sowed when the weather
permitted. They planted " chicory in the roar of the
cannonade, and beans as a souvenir of the war."
Above all, they prayed : " they prayed for peace, for
France, for the whole Church." One or two of the
Sisters were always before the Blessed Sacrament, to
help good souls in appeasing the wrath of God.f

The spirit of St. Vincent appeared to be ever pres
ent in the midst of his Daughters. The Ladies of
Charity, incited by his lessons, did all they could to
fight the misery invading the capital, and Mile. Le
Gras was anxious to do them justice. " You have no
idea," J she wrote, "of the amount of almsgiving in
the city. ... It seems as if the ladies took more
pains in providing corn for the poor than for th em-
selves."

* Conference upon the virtues of Mile. Le Gras.

f Letter to Sr. Hellot.

\ To Sr. Jeanne Lepeintre, April 6, 1649.

To Sr. Anne Hardemont, at Montreuil, July 23, 1649.

Mme. de Miramion. 243

To confirm this eulogy we need only refer to the
fact that M. de Lamoignon having sent to Baville
the grain intended for the support of his family, his
wife and daughter gave it all to the poor in one day.
St. Vincent said of him, " M. de Lamoignon runs
so fast in the way of good works that no one can fol
low him."*

These workers of charity have been eclipsed in
history by the brilliant Mme. de Longueville, Mme.
de Bouillon, Mme. de Chevreuse, and Mme. de Mont-
bazon ; but more useful to the kingdom and far
greater before the Lord, was a very young woman
whom we have not been able to name before this, but
whose image is too sympathetic to be passed over
without a reverential salutation.

She was named Mme. de Beauharnais de Miramion,
and was at sixteen years of age the widow of a coun
sellor in Parliament. One day, having heard of
Louise through her f friends Mmes. de Lamoignon
and de Nesmond, she came to ask permission to
make a retreat. " Mile. Le Gras," says the Abbe de
Choisy, "received her with open arms,"f and endeav-

* " Histoire de Mile, de Lamoignon."

f "Vie de Mme. de Miramion, par 1 Abbe de Choisy, 1707." M.
Bonneau-Avenant, speaking of this retreat, said it was preached by
St. Vincent. This is a mistake. St. Vincent, then absent from
Paris, gave missions or sacerdotal retreats and directed particular
ones, but he preached no retreats for ladies, this kind of preaching
being unknown at that time. (For details, see the life, works, and
parentage of Mme. de Miramion, the work of M. Bonneau-Avenant
Paris: Didier.)

244 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

ored earnestly to second the work of God in that
soul. It seemed as if God had brought these two
souls together to unite them once and forever in
the love of the poor, and was only awaiting this
moment to break the chains with which the world
was striving to captivate one at least of these His
servants.

The definite rupture with the world took place in
the same house of the Sisters of Charity, as a result of
a special grace she had received during her stay there,
and which, by order of her confessor, Mme. de Mi-
ramion committed to writing. During the night of
the iSth or igth of January, 1649, it seemed to her
that some one touched her on the shoulder and a
Sister came to show her to the chapel. She opened
her eyes, and a light brighter than that of the sun lit
up her room, and she heard distinctly these words :
" I am thy Lord and Master. ... I wish for thee en
tirely, without reserve. . . . Thy heart is not too large
for me. ... I shall be thy spouse, and thoti mine ;
engage thyself to be so." And it was gone, all
but the grace. From that hour, the impression of
which was never effaced, Mme. de Miramion became
one of the most devoted, most deferential auxiliaries
of Mile. Le Gras. Docile to her counsels, she en
rolled herself in the confraternity of St. Nicolas-des-
Champs, her parish ; soon after, she undertook to
visit the sick at the Hotel-Dieu ; also to visit the pris
oners and the bashful poor. She learned how to
bleed, established schools in the villages, and founded

The Civil War and the Daughters of Charity. 245

a house for young orphan girls, and participated
largely in a work undertaken by St. Vincent and his
Daughters in two of the desolated provinces.

For the space of ten years she endeavored strenuous
ly to repair the disasters which the war was constantly
renewing in Lorraine. One of the Mission Brothers,*
her ordinary messenger, had not made fewer than
fifty journeys there, loaded with alms from the Ladies
of Charity in Paris. This time it was Champagne
and Picardy, which the last campaign had reduced
to such a state of misery that the reality, shown by
recent publications^ surpasses by far the most extrav
agant dreams. From the month of May, 1635, these
provinces had been covered by enemies and defenders
equally pitiless, and were the theatre of success and
reverse alike disastrous, being by their geographic
position a convenient centre of assembly for the
French troops, and the aim of incursion for the for
eign army. For fifteen years the history of these
regions might be summed up in villages burnt, cattle
destroyed, harvests sacked, churches profaned, and
cities transformed into deserts. The French seemed
to equal in barbarity the Spaniards, and the pest
followed in their flight the famished population,
who, with their priest at their head, were wandering
through the woods.

* Brother Matthew Renard, who ordinarily carried 20,000 or 30,000
livres, passed through the army and bands of robbers without ever
losing a farthing. (Abelly, book i. p. 166.)

f "Journal d un bourgeois de Marie," par M. Piette; "La Misere
au temps de la Fronde," par M. Feillet.

246 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

No one in Paris thought of helping the distress
that was scarcely known, when St. Vincent, learned
from some travellers that a number of sick and
wounded soldiers had been left by the French army
near Guise, where the Spaniards had just raised
the siege. His resolution was taken immediately,
and, in concert with Mme. de Herse, he directed
a convoy of provisions and money to be brought
them by two of his missionaries. On their arrival
in the country these priests rendered an account
of affairs, stating that, to lend proper assistance,
not only the soldiers, but the entire people, needed
to share in the bounty. St. Vincent shuddered
on reading the accounts sent him, and hastened to
make a transcript of them, of which he had several
thousand copies distributed, in order to arouse the
charitable public.* Very soon alms flowed in abun
dantly to Mmes. de Lamoignon, de Herse, Nico-
lay, Traversay, Fouquet, Joly, Viole, and Miramion,
who were appointed to receive them, while the Saint
himself, giving the example of sacrifice, consecrated to
this work, with the consent of the Ladies of Charity,
the 80,000 livres they had given him some time pre
vious for his house at St. Lazarus ; and without delay
sent sixteen of his priests and several Daughters of
Charity among whom was Barbara Angiboust, al
ways on hand for difficult posts. These were to
spread themselves in Vermandois, Soissons, the neigh-

* This publication was in print five years, from September 1650 to
December 1655.

The Civil War and the Daughter s of Charity. 247

borhood of Rethel and Laon, and in the places most
laid waste on the frontiers between Arras and Sedan.
The missionaries traversed the country with provi
sions, clothing, bed-covers, grain for seed, and tools
for those who were still able to work. The Daugh
ters of Charity distributed meals to thousands, ar
ranged the hospitals for the sick soldiers, and opened
places of refuge for young girls. " There was no
service, however painful or dangerous it might be,
that was not generously rendered on this occasion,"*
says Gobillon, " for saving bodily life, and thereby
gaining the hearts of an infinite number of poor per
sons." The expense in 1651 amounted to more than
fifteen thousand livres per month ;f but the charity
abated not, and the city whence came the impulse con
tinued to show the greatest generosity. " All Paris,"
we read in a letter of St. Vincent to a missionary at
a distance from France,;): " contributes to this work."
He left his most important duties to attend to it
himself. The very day he wrote he had to attend a
conference of his Daughters at the house of Mile. Le
Gras, to plan out, with the Duchess of Aiguillon and
Mme. de Herse,some new methods of helping the poor
country. The circumstances of the time rendered
this enthusiasm of charity all the more admirable, we
must remark, as the horrors occasioned in the city

* See his work already quoted, p. 166.

f Letter of St. Vincent to the municipal authorities of Rethel,
May 20, 1654.

\ To M. Lambert, January 3, 1652.

248 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

by the renewing of the civil war were not less terri
ble than the ravages committed in the country by
the enemy.

If, indeed, the king s resistance had changed in
character, peace was not restored to Paris. There
had succeeded to the old parliamentary Fronde a
movement having at its head the greater part of the
nobility. The great Conde, who, two years pre
viously, had brought the court back to the capital,*
now personified the rebellion, and, camping between
the Seine and Loire, gave bloody battle to the royal
army, commanded by Turenne. Conde said after
wards, when returned to his duty, that he was at this
time " the most criminal of men." Desolation on
desolation reigned in the country, where the heart-
rendino- scenes which covered with tears Champagne

o

and Picardy were being daily repeated. The tran
scripts of St. Vincent were not slow in echoing this
new distress. " We hear of nothing," we read in one,
" but murder, robbery, violations, and sacrileges. The
churches are pillaged as much as the frontiers ; even
the Sacred Host is not respected, but is cast on the
ground in order to steal the ciborium. Most of the
grain is cut down, the villages are deserted, the pastor
and his flock are in flight, and the country people are
taking refuge in the woods." As is generally the case
in like circumstances, a great number of these poor
creatures, not waiting for the help coming to them,

* August 18, 1649. "This very day," Mile. Le Gras wrote, "our
good king arrives in Paris, bringing joy to every heart"

Suffering and Disaster in Paris. 249

slowly perhaps on account of the presence of the
army betook themselves to Paris, crowding up the
faubourgs, and augmenting the misery which three
years incessant trouble had spread in the city.

In May 1652 the number of poor persons who
were acknowledged unable to help themselves
amounted to ten or twelve thousand, without count
ing professional beggars. In June and July there
were sixteen thousand, and twenty thousand a short
time after. The work-shops were at a stand-still; the
stores opened only sometimes, or not at all ; com
merce had ceased, and to the sufferings of those who
were in extreme want was added the embarrassment
of those who might help them. To give only a few
examples: The house of St. Lazarus had lost 23,000
livres of income. The revenue of the Daughters of
Charity, levied partly on the coaches,* not running
now, was notably reduced ; and the deficit of the
Hotel-Dieu was as high as seventy thousand livres. f
Nature finally added her scourges to the disasters of
human revolutions. The Seine, restrained only by
weak embankments, overflowed, so that parts of the
city were approachable only by boat, and the pest,
which had raged for the past two years, seemed to be
a native of France.:): "There are so many sick in Paris,"
Mile. Le Gras wrote, "it seems we must all die."

* They had among other things 1200 livres annual rent in perpe
tuity on the coaches of Rouen, provided by gift from the Duchess of
Aiguillon.

f Feillet, " La Misere au temps de la Fronde."

| 1650. The pest carried off 22 physicians. (Feillet.)

250 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

Her Daughters had never seen so vast a field
open to their charity. St. Vincent s letters show
what part they took in the good accomplished in
Paris, and what assistance they rendered to the sick.
" They shelter," he said, " from eight to nine hundred
girls and women. They make and distribute soup
every day at the house of Mile. Le Gras to thirteen
hundred of the modest poor, and in the Faubourg
Saint-Denis to eight hundred refugees." " In the
parish of St. Paul alone they help five thousand
poor, without counting the sick, and as many else
where that would amount to fourteen or fifteen thou
sand persons, who for six months owe to them their
means of subsistence."* To a house of the Sisters
in the province he wrote: "Your company has
never labored so much nor so usefully." f

The letters of Louise are without details, as they
would only redound to her praise. We see that the
Sisters, who again took refuge in the mother-house,
numerous as they were, could scarcely perform all
the services required of them. " We were never,"
she wrote, " so poor in Sisters, nor so urged to send
them." But these public calamities are so many
occasions of touching exhortations. The shrine of
St. Genevieve was removed and carried in proces
sion through the streets of Paris, to implore a cessa
tion of the war. Alluding to this, Mile. Le Gras said
to her Daughters: " How good it is to be faithful

* Letters of June 21, 1652.

f To the Sisters of Valpuiseaux, June 23, 1652.

Fighting in the Faubourg Saint- Denis. 251

to God, who surrounds His servants with so much
honor !" Another day, writing to Barbara Angiboust,
sending her a louis of twenty-three livres and three
sous (which, perhaps, never reached their destina
tion) she writes: " Oh, if we only knew the secrets of
God, we should see that this time will be one of the
greatest consolation. You share in the necessity, and
that is your joy ; for if you were in abundance you
would grieve to make use of it and see the poor,
your lords and masters, suffer ; besides, should we
not suffer as well as others? Who are we, to believe
that we ought to be exempt from public calamity ?"

She spoke from experience, for these lines were
written in June 1652 in the midst of the war. The
Faubourg Saint-Denis had been a dangerous place
of abode for several weeks past, on account of the
blockade of Paris, the rumors of battles from La
Chapelle and Saint-Lazarus, the excitement of the
people, and the taking and retaking of Saint-Denis,
all of which interested St. Vincent and his people, as
he himself said.* The crisis seemed to be reached
on the evening of July ist. The place was surrounded ;
the army of the Prince of Conde coasted along the
grounds of the missionaries, and encamped there for
the night. Next day their rear-guard was dispersed
by the royalists on the heights of Saint-Martin, but
they were afterwards victorious in the Faubourg
Saint-Antoirie. Some hours later Mile. Le Gras

* Letter to M. Lambert, May 17, 1652.

252 Life of Mile. Lc Gras.

wrote a letter to St. Vincent which even now
breathes of the emotion of conflict. We quote it
almost entire : " This alarm frightens us all ; most of
the people are moving from the faubourg. Shall we
not follow their example ? It would be a great under
taking for us. If our young Sisters were in danger,
we might send them through the parishes, transmit
ting them provisions as best we might. As for me,
I am waiting for death, and cannot help my heart
moving whenever I hear them shout, * To arms ! It
seems as if Paris abandons this district ; but I trust
that God will not abandon it, and that His goodness
will show us mercy."

This letter, the only one in which Louise shows any
fear, gives us an idea how serious was the situation,
and explains the steps she might have been obliged to
take. Already one Sister, frightened by the commo
tion, was sent to the Hotel-Dieu, where she died. Mlje.
Le Gras herself, scarcely able to move, suffered for
several months from intermittent fever, which she
called her key to get out of this world, and only nour
ished herself with a little pea-soup. Her Daughters
were trembling for her life. Yielding at length to
their desires, she hired a little room in the centre of
Paris, and there retired ; but she could not long re
sign herself to what she termed her laziness, and
after a short rest she was again at her post.

As the removal of Conde s troops left the road free
to the country around Paris, St. Vincent arranged a
mass-meeting of ail the religious Orders. He dispersed

Attending to the Sick and the Dead. 253

them through the villages. The Jesuits went to
Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, and into the cantons of
Crosne and Mongeron ; the priests of Saint-Nicolas
to Brie and Lagny ; the Capuchins to Longjumeau
and Montlhery; two detachments of priests from
Saint-Lazarus to the Beauce especially to Etampes
and Palaiseau, where they found the streets blocked
up with corpses in a state of putrefaction, and the
inhabitants dying of dysentery and hunger. Some
had lived fifteen days on herbs and water; others
on army-bread moistened. At Oranges there
was not a living soul remaining, but the number
of dead were so great that the first duty of the
missionaries was to dig trenches and bury the
corpses. Some of the missionaries died, but none
of them lost courage. Their rivals in devotedness
were the Daughters of Charity ; they opened kitch
ens at Etampes Etrechy, Villecousin, Saint-Arnoul,
and Gullerval, collected more than six hundred
orphans, and nursed the sick. Several of them died,
also, of the labor, or, as St. Vincent said, "on the
field of battle, sword in hand." One of them, who
had served the sick nearly two years in Picardy and
Champagne, died almost neglected in Etampes,
where they could not procure a woman to sit up
with her ; and another, Sister Marie Joseph, not
willing to leave her duty, had the sick carried to her
room to dress their wounds, which she continued to
do, until one day, having finished her task, she fell
fainting and never rose.

254 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

During this time the Ladies of Charity, who had
displayed so much activity since the commencement
of the troubles, were multiplied in Paris. As the
author of the " History of Mile, de Lamoignon"
says, " God, who permitted, at that time, such public
want as had not been seen for several centuries, also
raised up more zealous and charitable persons than
had appeared in a long time." The Duchess of
Aiguillon made an appeal to the public in the name
of the company of the Hotel-Dieu, which was eagerly
responded to by all classes of society. The butchers
gave six thousand pounds of meat ; the bakers and
others subscribed still more liberally ; and depots
were opened in every parish to receive donations
of eatables, tools, linen, clothing, materials in the
piece to be transformed by the deft fingers of the
Sisters of Charity into dresses for the indigent, or
naments for the churches, or soutanes for poor
priests."* At length these offerings became cen
tralized in the house of Mme. de Bretonvilliers, at
a point of the city whence every month went forth
twelve or thirteen thousand livres of charity. The
impulse once given, sacrifices were no longer counted.
The queen sent jewels of great price to the ladies;
the Queen of Poland, with an exhausted treasury,
offered twelve thousand livres ; the Princess of Conti
sent from Languedoc precious stones, valued at fifty
thousand crowns ; and Mme. de Miramion, not to

* Deposition made at the Beatification of St. Vincent by Sr. Claude
Mussot, who had herself worked on these vestments.

Death of Mme. Lamoignon. 255

mention others, brought a magnificent collar and her
silver plate. Everywhere virtue overbalanced am
bition, and the most disinterested devotion enlight
ened the dark horizon of civil war. Misfortunes
were coming to an end, however. In October 1652,
Conde, weary of defeat, rejoined the Spaniards in
Champagne, and the young king entered the city
amid the acclamations of the people. The Fronde
was vanquished ; but it had caused evils difficult to
overcome, and, instead of tempering authority, it only
prepared the way for the absolute power of the king.
This period, so calamitous and for us so filled
with sorrow, had brought to Mile. Le Gras an
overflow of grief. Death, which had so often threat
ened herself, had now been severing dear bonds
and leaving vacant places around her. First of these
was the Superioress of the Ladies of Charity, the good
Lady President Lamoignon, as she was called, who
was taken from the poor on the night "of December
30, 1651. "God has taken her from us," wrote
Louise to one of her Daughters at Angers,* " to re
compense her holy simplicity, her perfect humility,
and her great charity. Thus, having prayed for her
as the Church ordains, let us beg her to obtain for us
these three virtues." In another letterf she shows
how great was the popularity of the lady president.
" The poor of the parish of Saint-Leu," she relates,
" calling to their assistance the bourgeois, opposed, by

* Letter to Sr. Cecilia Agnes Angiboust, older sister of Barbara,
f Letter to Sr. Julienne Loret, Jan. 7, 1652.

256 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

armed force, the removal of the mortal remains of
their Mother. It was her wish to be interred at the
Recollets of Saint-Denis ; but her son, M. de Lamoig-
non, could only carry away her heart to fulfil her
desire. The poor insisted that she rest in the vault
of their church, which accordingly took place." To
this striking testimony to her virtue we may add
another which Mile. Le Gras does not mention,
although the intercourse of her daughters with this
holy woman made it impossible for her not to be
aware of it. * Mme. de Lamoignon had retired to
the Convent of the Visitation in the Faubourg Saint-
Jacques, to share the grief of her sister, who was a
religious. Their mother had died only some days
previous, and they were speaking of her, with
tears, when a beautiful child came to the turn of the
convent-gate and passed in a letter containing only
these words: "Servants of God, weep not. God
had prolonged her life as much as His justice would
permit ; but His mercy is equal to His justice, and
mercy urged Him to give to His servant, your mother,
the recompense due to her merit." Every effort to
discover the child was vain : he disappeared imme
diately ; and so great was the reverence for the dear
departed that many believed this to be surely a mes
sage from on high.f

*The rosary used by Mme. de Lamoignon was given by her
daughters to Mile. Le Gras. After her death it was restored by
Michel Le Gras to Mme. de Nesmond.

f " Histoire de Mme. de Lamoignon."

Death of Mgr. Camtis. 257

Some months were scarcely passed after this sorrow,
when Mile. Le Gras lost the old friend of her youth,
the first guide of her soul Mgr. de Camus. After
having left the episcopal chair of Belley and filled the
humble post of Vicar-General to the Archbishop of
Rouen, he labored in that large diocese at his own cost,
and without any assistance from the prelate who then
employed* him, and "at length retired to the Hos
pital of Incurables in Paris." Voluntarily despoiled
of all he had possessed, he lived on charity and
served the sick as infirmarian and chaplainf at the
same time. His death occurred April 25, 1652. To
Mile. Le Gras this was a blow rendered heavier
from the fact that their tender relationship had never
ceased, and letters from time to time kept up the
union of their thoughts and testified to the fidelity
of their remembrances. In the midst of these afflic
tions God had reserved for His servant a joy long
waited for in the sunset of life, and made her think
of the drop of honey tasted by Saul which opened
his eyes and gave him new vigor. Michel Le Gras
had at length fixed his destiny. For a long time he
had been the subject of solicitude to his mother, as
we see by her letters. Now it was his health, again
his salvation, that tormented her. Always on the
wtch, she became uneasy if he did not send her

* Letter of Mgr. Camus to Mile. Le Gras, dated Pontoise. (Arch,
of the Mission.)

f Notice upon Mgr. Camus, by Mgr. Depery, Bishop of Gap.

258 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

an account of himself every fifteen days. She
would write to his friend, Count de Mony, to inquire
" if he had the great cross in his room ;" if he tried
to " overcome melancholy, the source of all his
trouble, by occupying himself according to his taste."
" He always seems to me," she would write, " to
have the fear of God and the desire to acquit him
self faithfully of his duty." Without ceasing, she
recommended him to the prayers of the Daughters
of Charity and the missionaries from Rome, or
begged St. Vincent to say a Mass for him, letting
him know discreetly the grief caused her by " that
person so dear to her." She had ceased to men
tion him always. Yet, to atone for his faults, she
had a picture made from some rings, the last of her
jewels. This picture was for an altar dedicated to
the Holy Virgin.

The time had come for him to think of settling
himself, but circumstances rendered his marriage
difficult, and Mile. Le Gras was obliged to interest
herself on that subject with the Marillac family.
This was humiliating, and she reproached herself for
" her pride " when her son was refused his first
position on account " of the small amount she had
to give him." " I ought, as a Christian," she
said to the Count of Maure,* " love the contempt
which ordinarily follows poverty." But the trial was.

* Michel Le Gras was also appointed General Treasurer of
France in the Bureau of Finance at Riom. He received this
charge July 22, 1652, as heir of Charles de Pierrefite, Lord of

Marriage of Michel Le Gras. 259

short, and soon all difficulty was removed. A short
time after the rebuff of which we have just spoken,
the future of Michel was settled satisfactorily to
his mother by the purchase of a counsellorship at
the "Court of Monnaies," and his marriage with
Gabrielle Le Clerc, daughter of Nicolas, Lord of
Chevieres " a very virtuous young lady, " we read
in one of Mile. Le Gras s letters, " whom God has
selected for him, it seems, and who is not from
Paris." * The contract was signed by St. Vincent
and by Adrien le Bon, ancient prior of Saint-Lazarus,
and the marriage celebrated January 18, 1650, in the
church of Saint-Sauveur. The only fruit of this
union was a girl, whom the community of the Fau
bourg Saint-Denis used to call "the little Sister,"
sending her cakes " before she had teeth to eat them."
Foreseeing that it would not be given to her to initiate
this little one in charity, and desirous that this virtue
should be eminently practised by her, Mile. Le Gras
soon added a codicilf to her will by which she left
to her grand-daughter the sum of eighteen livres to

Bosredon, the last incumbent of the office. Michel resigned this
charge the same year, December 3ist. The letters-patent, signed
by the queen, praise "his loyalty, prudence, diligence," and style
him "accomplished in judicature." He was then living in the Rue
Saint-Denis, parish of Saint-Eustache. He was also named bailiff of
Saint-Lazarus by St. Vincent, who, in quality of his possession of this
fief, had the privileges of high jurisdiction ; but, becoming deaf in
1656, he had to give this up also. He died in 1696.

* Letter of Mile. Le Gras to Sr. Jeanne Lepeintre, Jan. 13, 1650.

\ May n, 1656.

260 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

be spent by her on a yearly dinner to the poor of the
parish, whom she was to serve at table.

The ..maternal task of Louise was accomplished.
From this time she spoke of her family only to God.
If the name of her son occurs in her correspondence
to her Daughters, it is only to unite him to their
thanksgiving. But her spiritual family had not yet,
we might say, emerged from its childhood. Hence
her life must be exclusively consecrated to it; and
we also return to it to wander no more.

CHAPTER XIII.

1652 1655.

The Elect among the Elect Daughters of Charity in Poland Hos
pital of the Name of Jesus Founding of the General Hospital
Bossuet preaches there the Panegyric of St. Paul His Opinion of
the Daughters of Charity.

jHE SORROWFUL years of which we have
just spoken had made many ruins ; but
Providence watched with love over the
Servants of the Poor, and the little com
pany had weathered the storm without suffering
shipwreck.

It was a manifest mercy that Mile. Le Gras never
tired repeating to her Daughters, saying that their
entire life would be too short for gratitude * for
themselves and all who took interest in the work.
M. Almerasf saw in it a sort of miracle, "which
made him think of a letter dictated by St. Bernard
in a heavy shower, which letter was not even moist
ened although the rain poured in all directions
around." M. Portail, recalling all the dangers the
Sisters had escaped, especially those to which their
virtue had been proof, added : " If there were nothing
else, this last protection would be sufficient to show

*To Sr. Anne, July 23, 1649.

f Letter of M. Almeras, then Superior of the house in Rome, to Mile.
Le Gras. (Arch, of the Mission.)

262 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

that the institute is truly from God and governed by
His hand." * Hence on his return from Marseilles he
resumed the direction of the company with renewed
courage. After three years of absence he found, it
is true, many a vacant place in the company. Many
of the Sisters had died ; f but in spite of the troublous
times many new ones had joined, and among them
elect souls well worthy to take their places beside
those whose sweet attractive features we have tried
to sketch. We may here remark two young girls, only
a few months received, who were both destined one
day to be the support of their Sisters and whose zeal
distinguished them even now among their compan
ions.

One of these was named Marguerite Chetif,J and
was born in the parish of Saint-Sulpice. Lively and
ardent, she turned all her energy against herself.
When St. Vincent spoke to the community of a fault,
her eagerness to kneel was remarkable, and she was
often surprised in the act of kissing the floor where
a priest had passed. Already she manifested that
attachment to the rule which made her silent at
Angers, where the climate was ruining her health.

* Mile. Le Gras, June 8, 1649.

f In another letter, dated May 16, 1649, Mile. Le Gras tells M.
Portail of "the death of the Sisters Turgis, Jeanne Baptist, Salome,
Renee d Angers, Marie Epinale, Elizabeth Martin of Nantes, of good
Sr. Madeleine, for a long time Sister-Servant at Angers, and many
others who had entered the company during his absence.

JSept. 8, 1621. She entered the company in 1649, succeeded Mile.
Le Gras as superioress-general, and died 1694.

Sister Mathurine Guerin. 263

On the least infringement of the rule, she was accus
tomed to exclaim, " My God, must our company
relax and commence to depart so soon from its first
spirit !"

The other, almost a child, but a predestined one,
Mathurine Guerin,* had come from a distance. Her
first years were spent in a mill in Brittany, where,
favored with extraordinary grace, she had made a
vow of virginity at eleven, and resisted every per
secution to follow her vocation. Exterior gifts were
not wanting to her either, as she was handsome,
graceful, and intelligent. The administrators of the
Hospital of St. John said that there never was a
person so masculine and generous, of such good
heart and enlightened mind." Above all, she left
behind her, wherever she was, the renown of ex
alted sanctity. Hence came her ascendency over
all around her, which extended at one time to the
commander of the fortress of Belle-He, M. de Che-
vigny, whose conversion and entrance to the Ora
tory were the result.

* Mathurine Guerin, then seventeen years old, was secretary to
Mile. Le Gras. She was elected the third superioress-general, and
governed the company as such three different times, viz., for eighteen
years. Deeply imbued with the spirit of the founders, she finished
what they had only the time to prepare, and gave the company its
perfection. At the age of sixty-four she was attacked by an uicer,
from which she suffered several years, but she was cured by a Novena
to St. Vincent de Paul, and she continued for six years longer to serve
the poor with her usual activity. (Collet., vol. iv. p. 396, and Con
ference on the virtues of Sister Mathurine Guerin.)

264 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

An older member of the company, for she had made
her first vows, was Nicolde Bildet, from Toul, an ami
able type of humanity, who when delayed a little at
the homes of the poor asked pardon of her companions
as for a fault, and who denied herself the pleasure
of distributing among them the money she had col
lected for them.

Each of the others had her distinguishing trait ;
that of Sister Martha d Auteuil was love of the
sick ; she was called the worker of miracles from
the numberless cures she performed by her charity.
" The most repulsive exhaled, for her, the perfume
of roses." Tenderness for children characterized
Sister Frances. Always ready to receive them, she
was often seen in the street carrying one or two of the
poor little waifs in a creel, her arms heavy from fatigue,
but happy and triumphant. Barbara Bailly of Troyes
shared with her her labor and her love. During the
war of the Fronde she had often directed twelve Sisters
and eleven hundred children, displaying, though still
young, that spirit of practical ingenuity which after
wards brought Louvois and Mansard f to her to con
sult concerning a plan for the Infirmary at Les Inva-
lides. We find her again assistant to Mile. Le Gras

*She died in the odor of sanctity, Nov. 10, 1667, her eyes raised
to heaven. When she had breathed her last, her face, which had been
worn by sickness, resumed its healthy color, and her limbs remained
flexible as in life. ("Conference sur les vertus de la Soeur Martha
d Auteuil.")

f " Conference sur les vertus de la Sceur Barbe Bailly."

The Elect among the Elect. 265

during her last years, and meriting, by more than
half a century of service in the company, to be called
one of the Mothers.

Other signs of predestination not less evident were
manifested by several of the Sisters. Claude Bon-
nelle was remarkable for obedience ; becoming blind,
she refused to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Face
at Laon, in which she felt she would recover her
sight, because she could not consult the superiors to
get the requisite permission. Two years later, we
hasten to record, the pilgrimage was accomplished
and the grace obtained. In Marie Prevost, a singular
devotion to the Holy Sacrament distinguished her
from all around. In Toussainte Allou was remarked
a touching simplicity and a fear of never doing
enough to pay for her support. Jeanne Marie Cein-
tereau had such delicacy of conscience that she
trembled at the shadow of sin, and an energy un-
baffled by all the obstinacy of the Huguenots.

The sweet little Sister Gabrielle had not fought for
the faith like Jeanne Marie, but she fought a whole
year against her filial affection and grief at leaving
her mother. Not less affectionate towards the sick,
she wept when she had nothing to give them ; but,
fearless in danger, she continued her work for the
poor during the overflowing of the Seine. The poor,
who saw her indefatigable in labor, performing the
duty of two Sisters, looked upon her as a saint.

Such, also, was the impression produced by two
Sisters whom God pleased to favor specially by His

266 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

grace : Claude Parcole, who unintentionally con
fessed to having seen our Lord, surrounded by a circle
of precious stones, and who knew /beforehand the
moment of her death, and Jeanne Bonvillers, who
could not hide the favors she received. To see her
pray, to hear her speak of things divine, was joy to her
companions. One day an awkward servant upset a
kettle of water over her shoulders ; but to the great
admiration of her companions the accident did not
disturb her gayety. She accused herself one day of
having twice that week lost sight of the presence of
God. Not less mistress of her heart than of her
mind, when she passed her sister s house she covered
her head with an apron, so as not to be stopped on
the way to her sick.

If such was the life of these Sisters, what must have
been their death ! Sister Andrea, in the agony of
death, told St. Vincent that her " only remorse was to
have too much enjoyed the service of the poor."
" What, Sister ! is there nothing in your past life to
give you trouble ?" " No, sir," she said, " nothing at
all but to have taken too much satisfaction in that ; for
when I went through the villages to see the poor people,
it seemed to me as if I could not walk ; I felt as if I had
wings and was flying, so much joy was in my heart at
the thought of helping them." * "I never saw a dis
position so perfect," St. Vincent said when relating
this trait. " From this we must conclude that the com-

* " Conferences de St. Vincent de Paul aux Filles de la
Charite," p. 48.

The Daughters of Charity in Poland. 267

pany is the work of God, since there have been found
and are still found in it such beautiful souls."

It was surely the work of God, but St. Vincent did
not know the instrument made use of by God in ac
complishing the work, and he rendered to Mile. Le
Gras the glory due to himself. The goodness of fruit
shows the quality of the tree, but there is also credit
due to the gardener.

It was not in vain that Providence shed on the com
pany His choice gifts, for new labors were about to
claim their devoted attention. Among the charitable
women who were seen, some years before, visiting- the

* o

halls of the Hotel-Dieu was the daughter of the Duke
of Nevers, Louise jNIarie de Gonzaga, eldest sister of
the celebrated Princess Palatine, whose errors and
penitence elicited the eloquence of Bossuet. It seemed
as if her destiny had attached her to the court of
France ; but her marriage with Wladimir Wassa and,
after his death, with John Cassimir had placed heron
the throne of Poland. John Cassimir had forsaken the
Roman purple for that of royalty.* When on the throne
this queen practised the same virtues which distin
guished the princess. She thought nothing would be
better to remove the ignorance and immorality of her
people than to beg St. Vincent to send her a number
of his missionaries and some Sisters of Charity. Mile.
Le Gras could not supply all the demands from every

* After the death of his wife, disgusted with the throne, John Cas
simir returned to his first vocation. He died abbe of Saint-Germain-
des-Pres. His tomb is still in that church.

268 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

part of France. Nevertheless, like St. Vincent, she
knew the voice of God "in this call of a great king
and a good queen," in this proposition which opened
a field for charity, at once so new and so extensive ;
and in the month of July 1652, when Paris was still
in commotion, she prepared* three of her Sisters for
their departure.

Notwithstanding her ordinary strength of soul, this
commencement in a far off-land, separate from the
hive as it were, filled her with grave anxiety. We
may judge of this by her notes, which, incomplete as
they are, take up the instructions given to her Daugh
ters. She recalls the virtues which alone would sus
tain them ; the spiritual as well as corporal good they
would have to perform in that kingdom where faith
is at war with error. She quoted the example and
invoked on them the protection of St. Francis Xavier ;
then, in one of those moments of inspiration common
to the elect of God, she exclaimed : " My words are
not mine, my Daughters. Oh, what a grace is your
vocation! Who can express this grace? Not the
angels ; none but God ! To increase your virtue daily,
I beg His goodness to grant you benedictions, extend
ing, not from the east to the west, but from time to
eternity, from earth to heaven. Attach yourselves
to your rules like a snail to its shell in which it dies
before leaving." The Sisters took their departure
Sept. 7th, after delaying from week to week waiting

* The Sisters Frances and Marguerite Moreau, and Madeleine Dru-
geon as Sister-Servant.

77^6 Daughters of Charity in Poland. 269

ing for the Sisters of St. Mary,* whom the queen had
also called to Poland, and who wished to travel with
our Sisters. They traversed Protestant Germany
without difficulty, everywhere meeting the respect
due to their habit, and at the end of the same month
arrived in Varsovia.

Alas! the troubles of the Fronde which the Sis-
ters had just passed were nothing to what they were
now called on to witness. For four years Poland had
been the scene of a war at once political, social, and
religious; one of the most disastrous commotions in
the history of that country. Guided by a discon
tented nobility and enrolled in the service of Greco-
Russian schismatics, the Cossacks had covered the
kingdom with ruins. Churches were fired and
towns destroyed everywhere. In some places the
entire population had been massacred with a refine
ment of torture, of which we read with horror the
account in the national historians. At length the
pestilence, which the same year (1652) carried off
400,000 persons from Poland, attacked the capital,
when the queen had the joy to receive the angels of
charity sent to her from France.

No measures had as yet been adopted to abate the
scourge, and the terror was such that it was not
rare to see the sick chased from their dwellings and
left to die in the street without -medicine or food.
On the arrival of the Sisters all that was changed.

* The name given at that time to the Sisters of the Visitation.

2 70 L ife of Mile. Le Gras.

M. Lambert, Superior of the Missions * proposed to
transform the public halls into hospitals, transfer the
sick into them and leave them to the Sisters of Char
ity. The proposition was adopted and followed with
out delay, and the Daughters of Mile. Le Gras made
their debut in a strange country in this popular and
heroic style. Soon after the queen gave them a part of
her palace, which was fitted up to receive poor young
girls.f The queen herself (writes one of the Sisters to
her companions in Paris) took pleasure in spending
whole clays in their company, sometimes helping them
to nurse the sick, sometimes spinning or dividing the
thread for sewing garments for the poor. To econo
mize in order to help the poor, she went so far as to
wear broken shoes. She had such affection for Sister
Marguerite that she wished to detain her at court
while the other two went to Cracovia, where the pes
tilence had just broken out. The poor Sister re
mained mute when this was proposed. " What!" said
the queen, " you do not answer!" "Madam, I am
for the poor; I gave myself to God for them. You
will find enough persons to wait on you," replied
the generous Sister, and she went to Cracovia with

* M. Lambert was happy in helping the plague- stricken, but he
paid for this happiness with his life; dying in Jan. 1653, regretted
by every one and regarded as a saint. "Our poor Sisters in Po
land," wrote Mile. Le Gras, "have great need of prayers; for al
though both king and queen take care of them and are very kind, yet
their sorrow must be intense at the loss of such a father."

f " The Daughters in Varsovia have commenced their school. Sister
Madeleine succeeded." (" Lettre de St. Vincent," t. iii., pp. 163, 170)-

The D alight crs of Charity in Poland.

271

her companions.* So much good accomplished
drew down blessings on the French Sisters, and some
of the young girls whom they taught wished to join
the company. Hence Mile. Le Gras wrote : " I think
if God gives His blessing there will be a large estab
lishment. ^ While waiting for this time she thought
of reinforcing their number, and she wrote : " Since
you say you have one heart in three bodies, enlarge
that heart, so as to have no distinction between old
and rie\v."J Help never arrived at a more oppor
tune or more critical moment. A severer crisis than
that which had passed was threatening this year.

While the convoy of peace was on the frontiers of
the kingdom, the latter was invaded at one and

* Conference of St. Vincent to the Daughters of Charity. Some
years later the queen renewed the petition, and Sr. Marguerite wrote
to consult Mile. Le Gras. The question was submitted to the coun
cil, and after long deliberation it was decided that the queen should
be gratified and Sr. Marguerite might accompany her in her journeys.
This holy Daughter crowned her life by a glorious death, having
caught the germ of disease in caring for the plague-stricken.

f Letter to Sr. Jeanne Lepeintre, March 26, 1653.

\ To the Sisters Marguerite, Madeleine, and Frances at Varsovia,
Aug. 19, 1655. The Daughters of Charity, wishing to testify their
gratitude to the queen, had reared a little dog in Paris which they
brought to Poland. Concerning which we read in a letter of St. Vin
cent: "Mile. Le Gras brought into the parlor the little dog to be sent
to the queen. He loves one of the Daughters of Charity so much
that he will look at no one else. The moment she shuts the door he
whines and will not rest. This little creature has caused me much con
fusion, seeing his great affection for her who feeds him, and the little
attachment I have for my sovereign good." (April 9, 1655.)

272 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

the same time by two armies of Swedes and two of
Muscovites, the Swedish army commanded in per
son by the successor of Gustavus Adolphus. This
war, which in a few months made the king of Sweden
arbiter of Poland and threatened from that time what
took place one hundred years later, has been de
scribed in fiery eloquence by Bossuet in the funeral
oration of Anne of Gonzaga, sister of Queen Louise.
He represents Poland surprised and taken, " like the
prey which a lion holds in his claws ready to tear in
pieces. Horses are not swift enough nor men skil
ful enough to flee before the vanquisher. Poland
sees herself ravaged at the same time by the rebel
Cossack, the infidel Muscovite, and, still worse, by the
perfidious Tartar, whom in her despair she had called
to her assistance. Every one swims in blood, and we
stumble only over dead bodies."

In the midst of these disasters the Daughters of
Charity appear for the first time on the battle-field,
where the queen, knowing their fearless devoted-
ness, sent them to soften the hard lot of the wounded.
A letter from Varsovia during the siege brought the
news to St. Vincent, who hastened to communicate
it to Mile. Le Gras and her Daughters. " I shall
entertain you to-day with something that will
no doubt give you great joy," he said. " What !
Daughters of Charity in the army ! Sisters from
Paris opposite Saint-Lazarus going to visit the
poor wounded, not only in France, but even in Po
land ! Have you ever heard of such a thing, or of

The Hospital of the Name of Jesus. 2 73

girls going to the army for such a purpose? I
never did."

In fact it was an unheard-of spectacle in the seven
teenth century. Young French girls on the field of
battle caring for the wounded ! From the north were
Poles and Lithuanians and even Tartars and half sav
ages, a word of whose language they did not under
stand. History for two hundred years has rendered
familiar to us this glory of Christianity, but St.
Vincent could then say, " I know of no company
which God makes use of to accomplish such great
things as yours."

Whilst her Daughters were thus justifying the re-
noun of their virtues, Mile. Le Gras, in the silence
of retreat, was contemplating a new foundation on
the subject of which St. Vincent had consulted her,
for she still remained his necessary auxiliary in all
his enterprises, although she took such pains to con
ceal herself. The work in question was an asylum of
peculiar character, in the erection of which she was
to take a prominent part, as the notes found among
her papers give us to understand. This establish
ment was to receive about forty workers, aged or
infirm, and give them work proportioned to their
strength. It was the thought of a pious citizen who
submitted his idea to St. Vincent, and was to bear
the title : " Name of Jesus."

Looking at the work, as was her custom, in its en
tirety, Mile. Le Gras judged it to be great and excel
lent, because destined to realize in time the divine plan,

274 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

obliging man to eat his bread by the sweat of his
brow, and aiding at the same time souls to partici
pate eternally in the merits of the life and death of
our Saviour. Passing to practical considerations,
which never escaped her, she recommended the
choice " of useful trades, the product of which
would be easily sold, such as ferrandine ;* weaving
serge, which would serve for the house ; making
buttons ; laces ; glove making or ornamenting ; fine
sewers, who could have the work of large houses;
pin- makers, etc." She asks only that they regard
not the expense of tools or materials at first to put
the work in train, and that the persons chosen to begin
it be, if possible, of good condition, but willing to
pass for poor, and apply themselves to the work,
were it only for six months, so that they might
teach the trades to others.

This plan was adopted, and a house prepared in
the Faubourg Saint-Laurent to open the foundation.!
In March 1653 St. Vincent here installed twenty
men and twenty women, lodged in two bodies in
separate buildings, but arranged to face each other,
so that the pensioners could hear the same Mass or
lecture, and have their meals in common, without
speaking to or even seeing one another.

* Ferrandine, a cloth of silk and wool. The warp was silk, the
weft of wool or cotton.

fThis foundation became afterwards the Hospital for Incurables
(men), who, united to a similar place for women, were transferred to
Ivry, near Paris.

The Hospital of the Name of Jesits. 275

The Daughters of Charity were to preside over
the interior arrangements, and Mile. Le Gras was to
take the charge.

Useful as this establishment was in itself, it be
came more so by the great work to which it gave
rise. Its good renown was riot slow to spread in
Paris. The Ladies of Charity came to visit ; they
appreciated its economy, admired the harmony
which reigned among its members, and formed then
and there a project whose proportions seemed only
made to discourage the most intrepid.

Paris, which had commenced to spread out, was at
that time scourged by an evil which justly occupied
the attention of all serious minds. Although the
whole population was not more than seven hundred
thousand * souls, it counted not less than forty
thousand vagabonds and beggars. f Wandering about
the streets, demanding alms often with a sword by
their side, stealing what they could not otherwise
obtain, these unfortunate creatures often devised
means for attracting the attention by counterfeiting
disease, coming even to the foot of the altar to dis
tract the devotion of the faithful. At night they took
refuge in what was called the Court of Miracles ;^

* Numbers vary on this point; certain authors give Paris one
million inhabitants, others five hundred thousand only. A reckon
ing of Vauban, quoted byBrien La Tour in the table of the population,
is authentic enough (Paris, 1789), from which we would have some
years later (1694) 720,000 souls.

f Collet., 1. 6, t. 2.

J These courts were very numerous. Sauval named the Court of

276 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

dens whose dirt and noisomeness nothing now could
give any idea of. The largest of these dens, which
the others resembled more or less, was entered by
the Rue Neuve-Saint-Sauveur, and extended be
tween Cul-de-sac de 1 Etoiles and the Rue de Dami-
ette and the Rue des Forges. To enter you must go
through a labyrinth of little lanes, muddy and suspi
cious-looking, then descend along crooked hill, at the
foot of which appeared a place where there was
raised in a sort of niche a picture of God the Father,
stolen no doubt from some church. Surrounding
this was a dozen or more little habitations, as if
growing from the ground. Each of these accommo
dated, pell-mell, more than fifty establishments:
which made for that one court more than five hun
dred families, or at least three thousand inhabitants.*
A hideous population, without faith or law, manners
or sacraments, always in revolt against the Church
and at war with society. " Infidels among the faith
ful, dead before death itself, reduced to the state of
beasts, hunted, wandering, banished vagabonds."
This from Bossuet. And as if to make known how diffi
cult was the remedy, Flechier adds: " There was no
means of discerning the deserving poor from the

King Francis, and of Suinte-Catherine, Rue Saint-Denis; Brisset, Rue
Mortellerie; Gauthier, Rue de la grande Hue-Lue ; Jussienne, the
street of that name. There were also Rue de Bac, Saint-Antoine,
Tournelles, Saint-Roche, a la Croix-Rouge, Good News, Rue des
Filles-Dieu, Passage du Marche Saint- Honore,
* Piganiol de la Force, op. quot.

Founding of the General Hospital. 277

idle, worthless ones. In giving alms we knew not
whether we assuaged misery or encouraged idleness."
But the people were satisfied to bear these disorders,
as they believed that there was no remedy.

What statesmen could not accomplish, women con
ceived the idea of undertaking ; and what the power
of Richelieu could not achieve, his niece resolved to
attempt: viz., to snatch this population of misfortune
from its dens ; to offer it an honest asylum, work, food,
and the Gospel. This was the project formed in the
mind of the Duchess of Aiguillon by the sight of the
hospital " Name of Jesus." The Duchess was then
Superioress of the Ladies of Charity and of her
friend Mile, de Lamoignon. Her project was bold,
generous, extraordinary, never thought of by any
one before, and tending to nothing less than the total
extinction of pauperism in Paris. Before speaking to
St. Vincent, the ladies wished to talk it over fami
liarly with Mile. Le Gras, without whom they never
dreamed of undertaking anything. They wished to
ask if she thought it beyond their strength. They
came therefore to Mile. Le Gras and told her all their
intentions, of which she fully approved. Doubtless,
were it a political affair (she answered with her usual
good sense), the men might alone be able to accom
plish it; but as charity is to be the moving power,
women may evidently attempt it, like so many other
good works to which they have put their hands.
The social character of the measure, however,
could not be overlooked ; therefore she insisted that

278 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

some prudent men might be added to the ladies to
guide them in council and to act in law procedure.

All hesitation being ended by these consoling
words, the Duchess of Aiguillon in the next assembly
of "Charity" made St. Vincent her first overture,
which two of her companions supported by promising,
one 50,000 and the other 3000 livres of income. The
Saint was at first frightened at so gigantic an under
taking, as were also the first President de Pomponne-
Bellievre and the whole Parliament (acquainted early
with this design). Nevertheless, after eight hours
reflection, during which he consulted God in prayer,
he reconsidered his first impression and promised
his assistance. This approbation, experience had
already proved, was a guarantee of success.

Very soon the affair was marching along with rapid
pace. St. Vincent, by the intervention of the queen,
obtained the house of Salpetriere, situated opposite
the Arsenal, which was then unused, and he himself
gave the house in Bicetre, vacant since the departure
of the Foundlings. The Cardinal Mazarin sent
100,000 crowns as a first gift ; Pomponne de Bellievre
gave a credit of 20,000 crowns on the city; whilst
the ladies continued to collect from all parts con
siderable sums. Thus Mile, de Lamoignon obtained
one day 60,000 livres from Mme. de Bullion, widow
of the Superintendent of Finance, on condition that
she would carry it herself and keep the secret. The
charge was so heavy that the noble beggar, bending
under the weight, would not have been able to enter

Foimding of the General Hospital. 2 79

her dwelling- but for the timely assistance of a friend,
who recognized her and hastened to help her.
Thanks to all these efforts, the General Hospital was
soon erected and celebrated by all contemporaries
as a chef-d oeuvre* "one of the greatest creations of
the century, "f and "the most wonderful work ever
undertaken by the most heroic charity.";):

Two years after, the buildings, etc., were almost
finished, and, according to the expression of Bossuet,
"the new city was built." M. Abelly, whose name
shall ever be inseparably connected with that of Vin
cent de Paul, was appointed rector, and the mild
Daughters of Mile. Le Gras installed to receive their
guests. Unfortunately, as is often the case in this world,
the result was not equal to expectations. In vain a de
cree of Parliament published with sound of trumpets
that all beggars should meet in the court of the
old House of Pity, where they would be assigned
food, lodging, and work, according to their sex, age,
infirmity, or capacity, in one of the seven divisions
of the establishment. Instead of obeying this edict,
most of them hid away, left the city, or found them-

Patru, " Eloge de Messire Pomponne de Bellievre."
f Flechier, Funeral Oration on the Duchess of Aiguillon.
\ P. Lalemant, Panegyric on the first President of Pomponne-

Bellievrc, 1657.

Abelly, priest of St. Joseph in Paris, then Bishop of Rodez. He

has lent his name to perhaps the best history of St. Vincent de Paul.

The work, a collective labor of the Priests of St. Lazare, appeared

in 1664, four years after the death of the Saint.

280 Life of Mile. Lc Gras.

selves suddenly cured of their infirmities : which drew
the following from a poet of the time:

" Wounds healed so soon as these, I ween,
In Paris ne er before were seen."*

Five thousand, however, answered to the call. This
was an important success and the commencement of a
great foundation. The wants of it were numerous;
and Bossuet, then Archbishop of Metz, who took part
in the famous " Conferences du Mardi," instituted by
St. Vincent, was invited, a few years after, to preach
in the chapel of the General Hospital the panegyric
of St. Paul.* The young orator, then little known
in Paris, preached on this occasion what we call a
Charity sermon. Conjuring his auditors to take pity
on so many "infirm to be supported, ignorant to be
instructed, and poor to be helped, does it not seem
to you," he exclaimed, "that Providence has assem
bled them in this wonderful hospital that their voices
united might be stronger to reach your hearts? Will
you not hear them and join so many holy souls who,
conducted by your pastor, run to the help of these
poor creatures?"

Bossuet, without doubt, alluded to Mile. Le Gras
and her Daughters when he described these ministers
of charity. Without them the work would have
been impossible. His admiration for them went on

*Jean Loret, "Muse historique."
f 29 juin 1657.

Bossuct and the Daughters of Charity. 281

increasing. Some months after, preaching at Metz,*
where eight Sisters of Chanty were seen surrounded
by their poor, he said : " Assist with all your power,
my brethren, that confraternity consecrated to the
service of the unfortunate. Help those charitable
Daughters whose glory it is to be the servants of the
poor sick." Fifty years later, when quoting the
virtues of the Daughters as proof of the sanctity of
the Father, he wrote to the Pope himself: "We can
not be silent on this company of pious women
formed by him [St. Vincent] by means of holy rules;
applying themselves to help the sick and poor with
so much purity, humility, and charity, that they
hinder us from forgetting their founder and the
spirit he has infused into them."f

For two centuries the truth of these words has gone
through the world for confirmation. The General
Hospital has disappeared; but wherever there is a
Sister of Charity the poor will think of Vincent de
Paul. May they also learn to venerate her who had
for him a mother s heart, and who lives still in her
Daughters to love and console the poor !

*Nov. i, 1657. At Metz the work of the Sisters was called
"La charite aux bouillons." (Floquet, "Etudes sur Bossuet," t.

i- P- 503-)

f "Neque licet conticere de piarum feminarum ccetu quse ab ipso
sanctissimis Regulis informatae pauperibus et aegrotis sublevandis
tanta castitate, humilitate, charitate serviunt, ut sui Institutoris, ab
eoque insiti, spiritus oblivisci non sinant." (Letter to Pope Clement
XI. to ask the beatification of St. Vincent, Aug. 2, 1702.)

CHAPTER XIV.

1655-

Approbation given by the Ordinary of Paris to the Company of the
Daughters of Charity Session of the Establishment The Spirit
infused by Mile. Le Gras into her Daughters Wisdom of her
Government.

IE ARE touching on a very important epoch
for the Daughters of Charity. We shall
see now the society taking foothold in the
Church : not as a religious Order St. Vin
cent always insisted that it should preserve its sec
ular character, its seal of the parish but as an insti
tution holy and distinct, having its own life and its
special reasons for existing ; occupying a place whose
importance we may measure by considering the void
which would be left in the world were that society
to disappear. Mile. Le Gras at this time appears to
us by her wise legislation and firmness of action, as
the real foundress of the company.

The reader will remember the twofold transac
tion of St. Vincent with ecclesiastical and civil authori
ties, and the subsequent events the approbation
given by the coadjutor, the letters-patent granted by
the king, and the loss of all the papers in 1646. Nor can
he forget the painful impression left on the mind of
Mile. Le Gras from the tenor of the lost document,

Mile. Lc Gras Fears for her Company. 283

She feared lest, the Daughters of Charity being with
drawn from the Fathers of the Mission, their
spiritual bond of union such a source of strength in
the past might be severed at some future time.

Her fears on this head had not diminished, and
several times she mentioned them to St. Vincent.
One day, however, being in prayer, she saw clearly
" in a very special light," she said, " accompanied by
great peace and simplicity," that Providence had
given the spiritual and temporal guidance of the
company to the Mission ; that, to withdraw from their
guidance would be acting contrary to the will and
against the glory of God, and that in such case it
would be better to suppress the company altogether.

She believed she ought to communicate this light
to St. Vincent; and to give a neater, more precise
form to her thoughts she expressed them in writ
ing, adding: u Does it seem to you, most honored
Father it does to me that God says to you, in the
person of St. Peter, It is on your charity I build
my company ? " Her conviction was henceforth un
shaken, and she tried to impart it to all around her.
It even seems probable that, turning to the Holy See,
she sought the influence of the queen through her
maid of honor, Mile. Danse, a member of the
" Chanty," or through the Duchess of Aiguillon.
Otherwise we cannot explain the existence of a letter
from Anne of Austria at present in the archives of
the house in Rome. This letter sets forth at length
the ideas of the foundress. The princess, having

284 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

explained to the Holy Father the origin of the
Confraternity of Charity, the establishment and
growth of a company of "widows and young
girls who called themselves Servants of the Poor,
being trained to their work by a good and virtuous
widow," expresses a fear lest their special dependence
on the Archbishop of Paris might awaken distrust in
the mind of some bishop. The work being com
menced by the General of the Congregation of the
Missions, and the Archbishop of Paris having ap
pointed him director for life, would it not be well for
His Holiness to secure the permanence of that ap
pointment by naming as perpetual director for the
Daughters of Charity the Superior-General of the
Mission and his successors?

The result of this letter we know not ; but the ques
tion was proposed, and for years after Mile. Le
Gras continued with unfaltering perseverance to call
the attention of St. Vincent to that point. At length
one day, she addressed to him a memorial in which
she endeavors for the last time to convince him of the
urgent necessity for the company to be definitely ac
knowledged. " During the twenty-six years that I
have been by the mercy of God under your guidance,
Divine Providence has made me speak to you, on all
occasions, freely and with confidence." After having
humbly set forth that one of the principal means
to strengthen the work was to provide, from that
time, a directress who would show a better example,
she insists on distributing among the sisters a written

Daughters of Charity approved at Rome. 285

rule that might become the living nourishment of the
company. " In fine," she said, " the weakness and
levity of the mind has need of a support, such as
the sight of a solid establishment, which would
strengthen wavering vocations ; and the foundations
of this solidity, without which it would be impossible
for the company to subsist or procure the glory ex
pected by God, must be erected under entire sub
mission to, and dependence upon, the Superior of the
Priests of the Mission. The company must be affili
ated to theirs, to participate in the good done by
them and to live by the spirit which animates
them."*

These thoughts, so often already written by her,
and which, as she advanced in years, identified them
selves with her soul, seemed the voice of God in
her, and finally persuaded St. Vincent. He under
stood the law of Providence, viz., "The same
means employed by God to give existence to
beings will serve to preserve that existence." In
the example of the Saviour taking care of the
holy women who, as His followers, administered to
the faithful, participating, so to speak, in apostolic
functions, he found authority for his missionaries to
direct the Daughters of Charity, " engaged like them
selves in the assistance and salvation of their neigh
bors, "f Hence he decided to draw up a second re-

* M. Maynard, who had only an incomplete copy of this document,
places it in 1646. This is wrong; it is dated July 5, 1651.

f Letter of St. Vincent to M. de la Fosse, Priest of the Mission.

286 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

quest and demand from Cardinal de Retz, then at
Rome, new approbation for his company, its statutes
and rules, with the power, for himself and his suc
cessors, of conducting it under the authority of the
Archbishop of Paris. The request was granted, and
January 18, 1655, the Cardinal erected the company
of Daughters of Charity, approved their rules, and
placed them definitely under the direction of the
Mission.

" Gratefully recognizing," said the prelate (for it is
important to quote here the exact words of an act so
decisive for the future), "the benediction of God on
the care and labor of our dear and well-beloved Vin
cent of Paul to succeed in this pious design, we have
already confided and committed to him, and by these
presents we do confide and commit, the guidance and
direction of this aforesaid society and company dur
ing his life, and after him to his successors, the Su
periors-General of the Congregation of the Mission."

The destiny of the work was at last fixed, and
Mile. Le Gras, at the climax of her desires, had suc
ceeded by indefatigable efforts in preserving to her
Daughters the benefit of an authority which, with unity
of action, might secure the stability of the design.

It only remained to announce the good news. The
30th of May following, St. Vincent* assembled the

*In the collection printed 1845 this Conference bears date May
30, without the year, 1655; but doubt seems impossible. Not only is
it a conclusion of the text that it took place a little while after the
approbation, but St. Vincent said to the Daughters of Charity that

The Rules of the Daughters of Charity. 287

Sisters in conference for this purpose, and made them
acquainted with what had been accomplished.* " To
the present time, my daughters," he said, "you have
labored of yourselves, without other obligation
from God than that of fulfilling the order prescribed
you and the manner of life given you. To the pres
ent you have not been a separate body distinct from
the Ladies, of Charity ;f but now God wishes you
to be a distinct body, which, without being totally
separate, will yet have its own particular exercises
and duties. God wishes you also to be bound more
strictly by the approbation He has permitted to be
given to your manner of life and rules by my lord the
Archbishop of Paris."

The Saint then read a copy of the request he
had presented and the approbation he had ob
tained ; he then commenced the reading of the
rules, interspersing them with comments. "The

they had practised their rules for twenty-five years; but if we con
sider the company as formed in 1630, we arrive still and necessarily
at the date 1655.

* The Conference quoted by Maynard as being held by St. Vincent
on this occasion is only a compound of several Conferences of differ
ent dates which he tries to unite. We have had recourse to the
original text, of which we give fragments here.

fThey were so little separated that, up to the year 1654, St. Vin
cent had thought of giving them one of the ladies of the Hotel-Dieu
as superioress in case Mile. Le Gras were taken from them. At the
same time in Poland there was question of placing them under a per
son living intimately with the queen and helping in her good works

Mile, de Villiers.

288 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

first article of your rule says that The com
pany shall be composed of widows and girls, who
shall elect one among them to be superioress for
three years; this superioress may be continued
for three more consecutive years, but not longer.
This is well understood not to take place until after
the decease of Mile. Le Gras." At these words
Mile. Le Gras cast herself on her knees and begged
St. Vincent not to suspend the application of the rule,
but release her from a charge for which she was in
no wise worthy ; but the Saint begged her to be
seated and, refusing to enter into her sentiments, ex
pressed a desire that God would leave her to her
Daughters still many years. " He commonly pre
serves by extraordinary means those who are neces
sary for the accomplishment of His work ; and if you
take notice, Mademoiselle, you have not been living
in the ordinary way for more than ten years."

He then resumed : " Your confraternity shall bear
the name of Sisters of Charity, servants of the sick
poor. Oh, what a beautiful title ! What high dignity !
It is as much as to say Servants of Jesus Christ, since
He considers as done to Him what is done for His
members. He did nothing Himself but serve the poor.
Preserve then, my daughters, preserve with care the
title He has given you. It is the most beautiful, the
most advantageous you could ever have."

He then finished the reading of the rule, and added :
" Is not what you have just heard, my daughters,
that which you have been doing for the last twenty-

Rules read to the Daughters of Charity. 289

five years ? You have done it without it being or
dained, at least expressly ; for the late Pope had re
commended it to me ; but now you will do it because
it is enjoined. I have already told you that whoever
goes into a vessel to make a long voyage must accept
and observe the laws of navigation, otherwise he will
be in great danger: The same with persons called
by God to live in community : they run great risk of
being lost if they do not observe the rule. By the
mercy of God, I believe there is not one among you
who does not intend to practise them. Is this not
true? Are you all so disposed?" " Yes, Father,"
exclaimed all the Sisters, throwing themselves on
their knees. " When Moses gave the law of God to
the people of Israel, they were kneeling as you are
now. I hope that His infinite mercy may second your
desires in giving you grace to accomplish what He
demands of you. My daughters, do you give your
selves to God with all your heart to live in the ob
servance of the holy rules He has willed to be given
you ?" " Yes, Father." " Will you, from your heart,
live and die in the observance of them?" " Yes,
Father." A touching contest of humility interrupted
this dialogue. Several of the Sisters accused them
selves aloud of faults against the rule and asked par
don. The Saint humbled himself before them. " 1
pray God to pardon all your faults, my dear daugh
ters, and I, a miserable creature who do not keep my
own rules I beg His pardon, and yours also, my
daughters. How many faults have I committed in

2 QO Life of Mile. Le Gras.

your regard and in what concerns your work! I
beg you to ask God s mercy for me, and for that I
shall pray our Lord Jesus Christ to give you Him
self the benediction. I shall not pronounce the words
to-day, because the faults I have* committed towards
you render me unworthy. I pray God to give it
Himself."

Here, continues the narrator, M. Vincent kissed the
ground. Mademoiselle and all the others, grieved
that their Father refused his blessing, begged it
with so much earnestness that he at last consented.
"Pray God, then/ he answered, "that He regard
not my unworthiness nor the many sins of which I
am guilty, but show mercy and shed His benediction
on you while I pronounce the words." Then raising
his voice, he repeated the majestic language con
secrated by the Church in her formula: "Benedictio
Dei omnipotentis Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,
descendat super vos et maneat semper. Amen."
Thus ended that scene, memorable in all the annals
of the company.

Two months after, August 8, 1655, a new reunion
of almost all the Sisters in Paris was convoked in
the parlor of the community. It was held for the
purpose of making a solemn act of establishment
and to designate the officers. To this effect St.
Vincent had a second reading of the rules and
the approbation of the Cardinal ; then he said that,
instead of electing by a plurality of votes as the
statute ordained, he judged it necessary for the first

First Officers of the Daughters of Charity. 291

time to act directly and make the choice which
occurred to his mind. First addressing Mile. Le
Gras, he asked her to fill the office of Superioress
and Directress to the end of her life, as she had done
by the mercy and benediction of God since the
commencement. He then named Julienne Loret
First Assistant; Mathurine Guerin Second Assistant
and Treasurer; and Jeanne Gressier Dispenser or
Housekeeper.

A statement was then drawn up on parch
ment, to be seen to this day in the National Archives.
The foundress, the officers, and thirty Sisters who
knew how to write signed their names, and St.
Vincent, who wished to be last, signed it and sealed
it with the seal of the company.* A remembrance
was given of those who, absent in body, were present
in spirit at this reunion, and after the signatures the
names of all the Sisters in the community were
added. M. Portail was confirmed in his charge of
Director of the community.

The work was now settled, we might say ; but St.
Vincent never relaxed his care and solicitude. Al
though eighty years old, he continued till the year
preceding his death to preside over the instruction
of his daughters, assembling them almost every week
and explaining untiringly to the assembly, and to each

*This seal, like St. Vincent s own, preserved in the museum of
relics of the Mission, represents Jesus Christ with arms extended,
as if to receive all who come to Him. Several letters of Mile. Le
Gras bear the same stamp.

292 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

one, the rules which were to be their element of
strength and the pledge of their stability.

We have elsewhere spoken of those admirable Con
ferences which for more than twenty years assembled
the Daughters on certain days around their Father.
Outlines of these Conferences have been preserved
to us by the faithful hand of Mile. Le Gras;* but
these are things which cannot be touched without
losing their freshness and beauty, and to make a
collection of the Conferences, extracting certain
passages and leaving or mutilating others, would be
a rash enterprise, a kind of sacrilege. In reading
them over one can easily perceive with what chanty
St. Vincent came to the assistance of his Daughters,
by repeated explanations, familiar comparisons, and
examples taken from the lives of persons he had known,
"from King Louis XIII. to the poor laborer on the
mountains of Auvergne; from De Berulle to Mme.
de Chantal, whom he spoke of as a holy lady."
Without being present it would also be almost im
possible to give any just idea of the humility of
Mile. Le Gras, always leaving herself aside, never
giving her opinion except when formally invited by
St. Vincent in this wise : " Mademoiselle, will you please
tell us your thoughts ?" Then she rose like the others

* It was always she who took the pains to copy them, calling to
her aid at times Elizabeth Hellot, or, when she died, Julienne Loret,
or Mathurine Guerin. She thought so much of their original sim
plicity that she would not allow them to be revised, although one
of the priests of Saint-Lazarus offered his services for that purpose.

Mile. Le Gras Counsels to her Daughters. 293

to answer him ; nothing- could reproduce the touch
ing- originality with which some of the Sisters gave
account of the prayer they made on the subject
given out in the Conference, or their simplicity in
asking pardon reciprocally for the faults and the
bad example they thought themselves guilty of.
We shall then content ourselves with recommend
ing the original text to those of our readers who may
have the happiness of being able to reach it.

These instructions and counsels Mile. Le Gras
endeavored to recall and make understood by the
Sisters in the little Conferences she gave every week
at the mother-house, taking for her subject the
Gospel of the day, or oftener some point of rule.
" This rule," she would say, " which suffices to make
us saints."* She took the Conferences and rules
also for the subject of her particular advice, com
municated them by letter to the absent, and quoted
them once a month to the parish Sisters who were
obliged to come to the mother-house to see her and

o

give an account of their employments. She wished
above all to imbue the hearts of her Daughters with
a knowledge and love of their vocation. " Your
spirit," she said, "consists in the love of our Saviour,
the source and model of all charity, and in rendering
Him all the service in your power, in the persons of
old men, infants, the sick, prisoners, or others. When
I think of all your happiness, I wonder why God has

* " Recueil dequelques avertissements que Mile. Le Gras, notre tres
honoree mere nous a donnes." (Arch, of the Mission.)

294 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

chosen you.* What could you desire on earth for
your salvation that you have not? You are called
by God to employ all your thoughts, words, and
actions for His glory. "f To correspond to this voca
tion they ought to labor with zeal for their perfec
tion, joining to their exterior duties the exercises of
interior, spiritual life, remembering that, although
they are not and never can be religious, they should
lead a life as perfect as that of the most holy pro
fessed in a monastery ; making their cloister " a
cloister of obedience and not of stone/ \ in the streets
of Paris or on the village roads, and watching more
over themselves, as they are more exposed in the
world. They ought to be strong-minded women in
the right sense, finding no difficulty in labor ; open-
hearted, cordial, and meek with every one, having
nothing constrained, much less affected, in their
manners. St. Vincent recommended them and Mile.
Le Gras repeated to them to keep the eyes moderately
lowered, for an excess of modesty in this respect might
hinder outsiders from the service of God, by frighten
ing them, and thus prevent the good often effected
by modest gayety.

Devoted to the service of others, they must prefer
the interest of their neighbor to their own or to that
of the company. " This has been taught us by our

* Letter to Sr. Claude Brigitte, without date,
t Letter to Sr. Nicole Haran, Aug. 30, 1659.
\ Letters to the Sisters at Richelieu, not dated.
"Recueil des Conferences."

Mile. Le Gras Counsels to her Daughters. 295

honored Father, who learned it from Jesus Christ."
Such is the general principle. " Neighbor is, how
ever, a multiple term, comprehending at the same
time the poor, the Ladies of Charity, administrators
of hospitals, confessors, doctors, worldly people,
companions ; towards all these you have divers du
ties." Mile. Le Gras returns untiringly to the task,
distinguishing, shading, adapting with her perfect
tact these precepts to the wants and circumstances
of the occasion. She never made a body of her laws,
but scattered them abundantly through her writings.
From these writings we shall try to gather the sub
stance faithfully, being only the echo of her words,
and preserving as often as possible her own expres
sions.

" The poor before all ; a Sister of Charity belongs
to God for their service, and she should prefer
their company to that of the rich, leaving her prayers
and rules to fly to their assistance. All this when
necessary and not of her own will."f She must
serve them with patience and humility, meek
ness and respect, as the members of Jesus Christ and
as her lords, managing well for them and never
appropriating the least part of what has been given
her for them.

In regard to the ladies who have been enrolled
in the " Charity," " we must treat them with the

* Letter of Mile. Le Gras to Sr. Anne Elizabeth, at Montreuil-sur-
mer.

f Letter to Sr. Jeanne Lepeintre.

296 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

greatest respect, looking on them as the mothers
of our masters the poor, and remembering that they
oblige us very much in allowing us to be with them
in the service. At the same time we must receive
their visits, as made to the sick, in the wards and not
in our rooms, and never form any bond of attach
ment with them for fear of losing our time."
Deference towards the administrators was no less
recommended. " We must guard against giving them
occasion to accuse us of arrogance or self-sufficiency,"
for "you have no power of yourselves." Mile. Le
Gras said to her daughters, " You are subject to every
one, you are the last of all. As to priests, speak to
them with great respect, never anywhere but in the
church or at the door of the house; we must not
abuse their kindness." The rule requires that Sisters
sent to the parishes must, on their arrival, go to
receive on their knees the blessing of the priest, and
they should consider the confessor as sent by God,
treating him always with almost the same veneration
as when he is at the holy altar. Hence the necessity
of surmounting any repugnance or difficulty they
might feel to open their hearts to him. " Remember,"
she says in a letter to Jeanne Lepeintre, "Teresa,
that great saint, often had need of advice in very
different affairs from j^ours, yet she asked it quite
freely with simplicity and humility from the persons
sent her by Providence as directors, contenting her
self with what was necessary, leaving the rest to
the wisdom of God." She says elsewhere, "The

Mile. Le Gras Counsels to her Daughters. 297

Sisters may, however, go from time to time to
an extraordinary confessor, but not often in the year ;
our most honored Father in the last Conference
cautioned us strictly against these little amusements."
The world must not be frequented without pressing
reasons. " It reproaches us sometimes for being
wanting in certain compliments which we do not owe
it ; but it is edified afterwards, when it finds that it
is virtue which makes us indifferent, while it remarks
severely those who allow themselves to be gained
over by its applause." The Sisters should therefore
avoid all useless visits ; they should not amuse them
selves, according to the pithy expression of their
Mother, in gadding about, but prefer the company of
their companions to all other. "If you need other
entertainments or other consolations than those found
with our Saviour, find them among yourselves."
On this point Mile. Le Gras is inexhaustible, and
her recommendations are multiplied to infinity.
There above all is the place to exercise what she
called " our dear virtue, cordiality."* Serenity of
countenance, modest smiles, gracious words ex
changed when the Sisters meet ; eagerness to accept
the advice of a companion, or to do what she desires,
are so many means which the wise directress sug
gested to her Daughters to strengthen the bonds of
holy sisterhood. "The blessing of God is known
by support, by cordiality, ... so necessary to the per-

* Letter to Sr. Jeanne Lepinetre, Jan. 13, 1650.

298 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

feet union of Daughters of Charity."* In another
place she writes : " If humility, simplicity, and charity
which give support are well established among you,
there will be in your little company as many saints as
there are persons who compose it." Again she writes :
" I seem to see you in great peace and union, com
municating one to the other what you have been
doing when separated, where you went when out,
etc. ; one by the obligation of submission, and the
other by the obligation of support and complai
sance." These counsels occur on almost every page,
without Mile. Le Gras having occasion to complain
of not seeing them observed. On the contrary, she
had reason to rejoice at sight of the community.
" God be blessed for the good understanding and
holy peace which is among you ! This is the way to
live as true Daughters of Charity."

But seeing that, as St. Vincent reflects, "there is
not much affection for what concerns us not," the
Sisters should carefully preserve, as a symbol of unity,
all the customs of the mother-house ; whither they
shall come also from time to time to reanimate them
selves with the spirit of the company. Thus to quote
but one example. The Sisters sent to Arras asked
permission "to wear their capes like the women of
the country, for with their little head-dress they were
as strange as beings of another world." They were
answered, however, to "guard well against that.
Strangers never change their garments when they

* Letter to Sr. Madeleine at Angers, March 16, 1645.

Mile. Le Gras Counsels to her Daughters. 299

went to a place where every one was astonished to
see them in such a garb. The Poles, for instance,
were well received in Paris dressed in their own
fashion, and no one thought it ill of them to dress so
when they came to see their queen." Nourishment
must also be uniform in its simplicity, and wine for
the most part excluded. St. Vincent, remembering
no doubt his captivity, said : " The Turks, who never
drink, are stronger than we are." Singularity should
not exist in books of devotion, which should be few.
The " Imitation/ a prayer-book,* the rule, and Philo-
thea or Love of God, and you have the library of a
Sister of Charity. f Her breviary is her beads.
Mile. Le Gras wrote one day to a sister: " I send you
a prayer-book of the kind we use here. We must .in
all things practise what appertains to our vocation ;
that is to say, the poverty of our Lord and His holy
Mother."

In the eyes of the holy foundress poverty was
the base of the company, and she recommended
it earnestly to her Daughters. Her most constant
wish was that the company would be maintained in
the poverty and frugality which she judged neces
sary for its conservation. Thus to speak only of
habitation, to those who found themselves in a fine
house she recalled the fact that all "they owned in it

* "Our first and holy Sisters contented themselves with the words
of the Imitation of Christ and a prayer-book." (Circular, March I,
1733.)

f Letter of Mile. Le Gras.

300 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

was their living and a shelter." To others, obliged to
prepare their own dwelling, she advised to " make
choice of the lodgings of poor girls."* When she was
obliged herself to have an addition to the house, she
wrote to the architect : " It is absolutely necessary that
this building appear as simple and as contracted
as possible, for the company, to endure, must appear
in all things poor and humble."

For the rest, Mile. Le Gras did not confine herself
to general counsels, of which we must say we do not
pretend to give a complete outline ; for each of her
Daughters she had special directions, varied accord
ing to character and natural gifts, which she took
care to esteem as " a gift of God for accomplishing
good." Very exacting, we might say, with those in
whom she perceived a call to perfection, she showed
astonishing patience and indulgence for the weak,
and her conduct was often justified by the improve
ment of those who were the subjects of her quiet
zeal. How many Sisters, apparently incorrigible,
have been led by her to good ! f

God had given her great discernment of souls and
light which eminent men, such as the Abbe Vaux,
disdained not to invoke for the guidance of their con
duct:): In rendering account of this divine gift, she
said she thought she could clearly see the disposi
tion of her neighbor, especially of the company ; but

* Letter of Sr. Mathurine Guerin to Sr. Marguerite Chetif.

f Ibid.

\ Letter of Mile. Le Gras to the 1 Abbe de Vaux, March 10, 1643.

Wisdom of Mile. Le Gras Government. 301

in her humility she saw in this only a fault to accuse
herself of. During a retreat we find her asking her
self what means to apply as a remedy for her quick
ness in seeing the faults of others, reprehending
them and annoying herself about them. She loved
them to come to her simply, and she assisted them
to open their hearts, especially those who were tried
or suffering ; and by her prudence and good manage
ment often, without intending, she also led them to
see their own failings.*

This quality of foundress she possessed in a remark
able degree. St. Vincent de Paul said he had never
met with a more prudent person, and in the assembly
held a few months before her death,f he could not
avoid praising publicly and in her presence the wis
dom of her government. He feared not to assert
that no community in Paris was in as good a state as
that of the Daughters of Charity, and like them out
of debt ; they alone asked for no help ; and while
the Daughters of Mary had to bring twelve or
thirteen hundred livres, they had no other dowry
than the poor and Providence. The company, how
ever, was prospering, he would remark ; and Mile,
had also found means by her economy, notwith
standing the expense of a recent building, to secure
some rents on the coaches and elsewhere. St. Vin
cent might have added that she had obtained these
results without the slightest departure from the rule

* Conference upon the virtues of Mile. Le Gras.
t J ul y 3i, 1659.

302 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

of disinterestedness he had so implicitly traced for her ;
counselling her not to demand a debt contracted by
a lady so great as the Duchess of Mortemart*

The prudence which directed so happily Mile. Le
Gras when only the material subsistence of the com
munity was in question, was still more necessary to
inspire her conduct in the other and higher exis
tence of all religious communities, the maintenance
of rule and unity of purpose. We shall quote but
two examples of this. The first is furnished by a
serious affair which for several months saddened
the hospital of Chars near Pontoise, where the wife
of President Herse had established the Sisters. At
the end of some years of service they found them
selves under a Jansenist priest, who, after removing
their confessor, refused them communion and en
deavored to compel them, by threats of public pen
ance at the church-door, to yield to his orders in
practices contrary to the rules of the company,
such as to receive strangers into their houses, and
in their instruction of children to use means of
correction which had been justly banished from
their schools. Mile. Le Gras bore it patiently
at first, and tried, every means to secure the tran
quillity and liberty of her sisters ; but she feared for
her Daughters the contagion of doctrines and maxims

*It was a question of expense for one of her children, Athenais,
afterwards Marchioness of Montespan, who at the age of fifteen had
been with the Sisters of Charity. St. Vincent took occasion from
their loss to counsel them never to admit the rich as boarders. (As
sembly of March 22.)

Wisdom of Mile. Le Gras Government. 303

opposed to the spirit of the Church, and she recalled
them,* although by so doing she had to risk the dis
pleasure of one of her devoted friends. The second
example is more striking still, as the jealous care she
took to protect the integrity of the rules led her to
sustain her authority in opposition to M. Portail
himself, who seemed to misunderstand the circum
stance. We are ignorant of all the details, but their
letters f fortunately are extant to witness to the re
spectful, prudent firmness of the foundress and the
humility, at the same time, of the director, and their
mutual desire to end a difference which had not for one
moment changed the cordiality of their intercourse.
The prudence which Mile. Le Gras practised in
such perfection was not the special signet she wished
to imprint on her community. " I know not if I am
deceived," she said, " but it seems to me our Lord
wants more confidence than prudence to maintain
the company, and confidence will act prudently
without perceiving it. Experience has often proved
this to me when the laziness of my mind needed
it."J Confidence, simplicity, cordiality such is the
spirit which Mile. Le Gras sought to instil into her
Daughters; and we must say to their praise, it is
that which has accompanied them all through their
history, and which is their distinguishing trait to-day.

* Letters, not dated, of Mile. Le Gras to the wife of President Herse,
and to the Cure de Chars.

f Letters of Mile. Le Gras to M. Portail, not dated, and his answers.
\ Letter dated August 8, 1656.

CHAPTER XV.

16571659.

Louis XIV. recognizes the Existence of the Company Develop
ments of the Work in France The Daughters of Charity in the
Army They are asked for in Madagascar Death of Mile.
Pollalion and Barbara Angiboust.

|LLE. LE GRAS had accomplished her
task. She had secured to her Daughters
the existence of their society and the
exercise of their functions, and also re
moved, as far as possible, all uneasiness that might
trouble their minds with regard to the future. No
more remained for her to do but to gather the fruits
of her labor, and while watching unceasingly the
interior organization of the company, to direct its
extension outside.

Tuesday of Pentecost week, 1657, the term of the
officers appointed directly by St. Vincent having
expired, the first election was held. This was con
ducted by the Sisters themselves as the statute
required. The Saint urged upon them the import
ance of making a good selection, and enumerated the
qualities necessary to exercise the duties of each
office ; then, in conformity to the method followed
by the Apostles, he proposed two names for each

Election of new Officers. 305

The names were submitted to every Sister of four*
years vocation ; and after having addressed a prayer
aloud that God would let them know whom He had
selected from all eternity, he took the votes. Sister
Jeanne of the Cross was chosen first assistant,
Genevieve Poisson treasurer, and Madeleine Mes-
nage, dispenser. As soon as the names were read
out, one of the officers rose from her place and,
throwing herself on her knees, asked pardon for the
faults she had committed in the exercise of her
charge. " May God bless you, my daughter !" replied
the Saint, " Mile. Le Gras gives me a very good
account of you and your conduct, as also of the two
others. May God be glorified in it ! You did right
to ask pardon of your Sisters for the bad example
you think you have given them ; for it is very difficult
to act so well as to leave nothing to be said against
you. Besides, it is a custom among the Sisters of
Mary when leaving their charge." The two other
officers then followed the example of the first, and the
Saint gave them for a penance to recite the Litany of
the Holy Name of Jesus, and to hear the next day s
Mass for the intention of the newly elected.

While the work was thus taking a regular course
in its interior, it received a sanction long looked
for, and one that already was making its future
bright. The civil authority had by degrees become
accustomed to the secular character which St. Vincent
had endeavored to preserve in the community ;

* Afterwards eight years vocation was required.

306 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

although at first the magistrates, even those most in
its favor,* were astonished. Success, therefore,
crowned the efforts which Mile. Le Gras had not
ceased to make since the loss of the papers. The
royal favor and approbation were obtained. The
terms of the ordinance read: " Nov. 1657. The
king, desirous of favoring all the good works in his
kingdom for the glory of God, and rendering
homage to the new confraternity which * had had its
commencement so filled with benediction, and its prog
ress so abundant in Charity, authorizes it to extend it
self in all the states subject to his obedience. He takes
it under his special protection and that of his succes
sors, permits it to receive donations and legacies, and
grants it considerable privileges and exemptions/ f

Royal protection only confirmed public opinion.
All over the kingdom the name of the Daughters
of Charity commenced to be heard. " It pleases
God," said Mile. Le Gras, "to give renown to what
the Sisters have been doing for a long time un
noticed;" and St. Vincent wrote: "You cannot be
lieve how God blesses these poor Sisters wherever
they go. The other day I asked a priest who has
them in his parish how they were doing, and 1 dare
not repeat all the good he told me of them. The
same with others; some more, some less. Not that
they do not commit faults; alas! who does not?

* Letter of Mile. Le Gras to St. Vincent, April, 1650.
f Letters patent registered in Parliament, Dec. 16, 1658. (Arch.
Nat., Carton L, 1054.)

Calls for the Daughters of Charity. 307

But they never tire of acts of mercy, which is the
characteristic of God. Thus they are in repute
everywhere." The Saint continues: "A bishop wants
them for three hospitals; another requests them for
two hospitals ; a third, also, who spoke to me but
three days ago. is urging me to send them to him."
In another letter he enters more into details: Mgr.
the bishop of St. Malo does too much honor to the
poor Daughters of Charity in wishing to employ them
in his town ; but that cannot be at present, for Mile.
Le Gras has no one ready to go, and cannot supply
those who have been asking for them a long time.
Mgr. the bishop of Cahors * is earnest in his solicita
tions ; Mgr. d Agde f asks them for his city and for
Pezenas ; for two years the Abbe Cy ron is waiting for
for them in Toulouse ; the bishop of Angers wants them
for a new hospital ;J and the Chancellor, adds Mile.
Le Gras, " for an establishment one hundred and fifty
miles from here." Nor was this yet all. The Ladies
of Charity when they went to pass the summer in the
country " aux champs" in the fields, as was then said
often wanted the Sisters for the poor people on
the domain;! finally, the Sisters themselves, overbur-

* " For four years Mgr. of Cahors has been asking with such
earnestness that he is angry with me because Mile. Le Gras had
not the means of satisfying his desire." (Instructions given by
M. Vincent, November 4, 1658, to the Sisters leaving for Cahors.)

f Mgr. Fouquet, brother of the Superintendent of Finance.

\ To the Superior of St. Meen, June 14, 1656.

Letter of Mile. Le Gras.

|| In this way Mme. Fouquet generally brought a Sister to Vaux.

308 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

dened with work notwithstanding their courage,
were asking for reinforcements. " Sir," wrote one
of them to St. Vincent, " we are overloaded with
labor, and we must succumb if not assisted. I am
constrained to write these few lines at night, guard
ing the sick, having had no rest during the day;
and as I write I have two dying patients to attend to.
I go to one and say, My friend, raise your heart
to God ; ask His mercy ; then I come and write a
word or two, and run to the other to say, Jesus!
Mary ! my God ! 1 hope in you, and return to my
letter. Thus I come and go, and write in between,
having my mind quite divided." But not forgetting
the end in view, she concludes thus: " I beg you most
humbly to send us another Sister."

Alas! Mile. Le Gras was obliged to reject most of
these requests. A sorrowful task, for it grieved her to
see so large a harvest whitening and so few gleaners.
"Ask our Lord for laborers for His work," she repeated
to her Daughters, and she tried to establish in some
diocese in the middle of France, at Agde or Cahors,
a seminary independent of the house in Paris, the
advantage of which would be to recruit new subjects
and be able more easily to furnish Sisters for more
distant places.* With all this insufficiency of numbers,
she managed to send Sisters to the Insane Hospital,
called the " Little Houses," at Paris; Varese, in the
diocese of Chartres; to the hospital at Fere, "where

* Council held April 25, 1656.

The Daughters of Charity in the Army. 309

they soon became the edification of the whole city ;"
toCahors; to Metz, where the queen wanted them
to make known the sanctity of the Catholic religion
to heretics and Jews, numerous in that city.* She
sent two Sisters to the Duchess of Ventadour for
her estate back of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, in lower
Normandy,f and two for the hospital of Ussel, in
Limousin. She promised three to Narbonne, six to
Saint-Menehould, and several to Alise in Burgundy,
where St. Vincent undertook the construction of an
hospital for all pilgrims and infirm persons attracted to
the warm springs or the tomb of St. Reine. These new
foundations swelled the number of provincial establish
ments to thirty-four, to which we must add the five hos
pitals of Paris and the twenty-six parishes of that city
where the sick were attended in their own dwellings.
Besides the hospitals, schools, and houses of
mercy in the parishes, the Sisters of Charity were
called on to nurse the sick and wounded sol
diers. Already at Sedan, 1654, and at Arras, 1656,
they had made their first campaigns, "praying to
God for the king s army and the enemy s conversion;
for we are under too much obligation to our dear
France to need any recommendation from me to

* Instructions given to the Sisters on their departure for- Metz.

f" These poor girls!" wrote Mile. Le Gras, testifying to their
fidelity to God, "they are fifteen miles from Caen, and no camp or
other messenger goes there. Thus they are sometimes three months
without hearing from us, and our letters are often lost; nevertheless
they live as if they were with us." (Jan. 8, 1657.)

3io Life of Mile. Le Gras.

you," said their Mother. After the taking of Dun-
kerque from the Spaniards, the queen ordered them
to Calais, where six hundred wounded soldiers
were being decimated by an epidemic ; the young
king himself being attacked by it also. Some
touching details remain of the departure of those
destined for this post of honor. All the Sisters were
assembled in the parlor where so many separations
had already been witnessed. The four departing
were standing around Mile. Le Gras, and were taking
leave of St. Vincent, whom most of them would see
no more on earth. The Saint was so deeply im
pressed with the greatness of their mission that he
could scarcely speak. " What a subject of humiliation,
my daughters," he tried to say " what a subject of
humiliation for you that God wills to be served by you
in such great things ! Men go to war to kill ; and you
you go to repair the evil which they do. In kill
ing the body they often, also, kill the soul ; and you
you go to give your life for the one and for the
other." Then, as if moved by a secret presentiment:
" When you are in the midst of the battle, have no
fear ; if one of you should lose her life oh ! would
it not be a blessing for her?" These words were
spoken with such a tone of certainty that Sister
Claude Muset, a little fearful of this mission, felt all
her fears vanish like smoke, and she set out with joy.
This she stated at the process of his canonization.

All four were chosen from the strongest and
most robust of the company ; yet, a short time after

The Daughters of Charity in Madagascar. 3 1 1

their arrival, one of the number, Frances, died, and
the three others, dangerously sick, had to be carried
to a convent of the Dominicans. At this news
twenty of their companions in Paris offered to re
place them, making- their offering with such ardor and
enthusiasm that Mile. Le Gras compared it to that of
soldiers at the call of battle. One old Sister among
the rest, Henrietta Gesseaume, burning with the
desire of risking her life, called on St. Vincent at the
Hotel-Dieu at a time when she was sure of meeting
him there, and entreated his permission to make one
of the party for the scene of war. En route for
Calais she heard that Sister Marguerite had become
a second victim. " Sister Marguerite is dead also,
sword in hand.* It takes more than that to discour
age us ; " she wrote to Mile. Le Gras.f " On the
contrary, we are longing to arrive, to assist the
poor soldiers stretched on the ground on a little
straw a pitiful sight, they say." Thus the pious
batallion moved on with new ardor to the combat.

Still another apostolate appeared in the horizon.
Not only the ambulance-halls of France and Poland
demand the valiant Daughters of Mile. Le Gras, but
the far-distant isles of the Indian Ocean. " Your
name," Saint Vincent had said to them one day, " is
spread abroad ; it is known in Madagascar, where

* Letter of Mile. Le Gras. The queen raised a monument at her
own expense, on which she had engraven the names of the two
Sisters and that of St. Vincent de Paul.

f Aug. 8, 1658.

312 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

you have been asked for, and our missionaries who
are there write to us that it would be well if you
had an establishment there to gain the souls of the
poor negroes." *

These words were not premeditated, but Mile. Le
Gras took them as a hope. " Oh, what a blessed
journey !" she exclaimed. " I think it is not more
than ten or twelve hundred miles !" And she asked,
laughing, " Would that be enough to frighten Sister
Henriette ?" f At all events it did not frighten Sister
Nicole Haran,:}: who, at Nantes, had collected the
ruins of a shipwreck from which three missionaries
miraculously escaped ; they were going, moreover,
to Madagascar. Nevertheless she wrote to St.
Vincent that she felt urged to go and serve God in
that abandoned place. She Avas far from being the
only one, for Mile. Le Gras hesitated not to say,
" The greater number of our Sisters do not wish the
journey to Madagascar to be made without them." ||
Here we have precisely the Sister of Charity of the

* " Recueil des Conferences."

f Letter to a Sister.

\ Sister Nicole Haran was elected Second Superioress of the Sisters
of Charity.

The Gazette de France speaks of this miraculous preservation, "at
tributed, they say, to the faith of a Mission Brother." This Brother,
called Christopher, had constructed a raft, with his mantle for sail,
and, his crucifix in his hand, he directed this frail skiff and kept up
che tourage of his companions. The other passengers, 120 persons,
and everything in the wreck, perished in the waves.

| Letter to St. Vincent, Jan. 1658.

Death of Mile. Foliation. 313

nineteenth century, and such as the foundress loved
ready for everything", armed with strong confidence
in God, abandoned to Him to do whatever He
wills, minding- no office or duty, neither low nor
high nor difficult.* The Saint blessed the Lord for
courage so extraordinary in poor village girls, and,
like St. Benedict on the heights of Mt. Cassin fore
seeing in a ray of light the future of his Order, he
also perceived from the heart of Paris the extension
of his work all over the world. " The day will
come," he said to the Sisters, " when God will send
you to Africa and the Indies." But he did not
believe the hour had arrived, and events justified
his prudence ; for, driven by the tempest into the
port of Lisbon, the missionaries fell into the hands
of the Spaniards, and having put to sea the year
after, their vessel went to pieces on a rock.

While the Sisters of Charity were thus shedding
the odor of virtue everywhere, the trunk of the
parent-tree, the confraternity whose name they
bore, was receiving a cruel blow. Mile. Pollalion
had just died. This faithful friend of Mile. Le Gras,
whose name brings us back to the laborious years of
their apostolic course, had also founded a spiritual
family ; f but at the cost of what efforts and what sac
rifices ! Her historian says she went from house to

* Counsels quoted by Mathurine Guerin.

f The Daughters of Providence, or of Christian Union, Rue d Ar-
belete, from which arose the community of New Converts in the
quarter Saint-Germain.

314 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

house begging-, often eating only a morsel of bread
picked up in haste as she went along to save time,
sometimes after thirty hours absolute fast. She
spent a great part of the night in prayer, and in
winter she was often seen making a pilgrimage bare
foot to Aubervilliers,* that she might obtain from
God the sanctification of her Daughters and the pre
servation of the king. Finding her end approaching,
she had herself carried on a litter from Rouen,
where she had been on business, to her house in
Paris, and had scarcely arrived in the chapel of
the convent itself, where she had just time to receive
Extreme Unction, before she expired.f

One of the Daughters of Charity that Mile.
Pollalion had known in the little house of the
Faubourg Saint-Victor when, during the absence
of Mile. Le Gras, she took her place, went to
join her soon after in eternity. This was no other
than Barbara Angiboust, who, after devoting herself
in Champagne to the victims of the war, had suc
cessively founded establishments at Bernay, in Nor-

* Notre Dame des Vertus (that is to say, of miracles), at Auber-
villiers,was agreat devotion in the seventeenth century. M.Olier went
there to consult God before commencing his foundations. He went
again every year, and came back to Paris by way of Saint-Lazarus.

f The universal martyrology gives her the title of Venerable,
and the Archbishop of Paris, convinced of her sanctity, substituted
the Mass of the Holy Trinity for the Mass of Requiem usually said
on the anniversary of her death. ("Vie de la venerable servante de
Dieu Marie Lumagne, veuve de M. Pollalion, etc." Paris, chez He-
rissant, a la croix d or et aux trois vertus, 1744.)

Death of Barbara Angiboust. 315

mandy, and at Chateaudun. Attacked by a malady
which permitted her not to communicate, she asked
to have the Blessed Sacrament brought to her room,
and adored it with transports. Then she called around
her bed of suffering the little children brought up in
the hospice, to exhort them to piety ; and the Sisters,
to encourage them to spare nothing in the service of
the poor. After her death* she looked so wonderfully
beautiful that the women of the city, who came in
crowds to lay their beads on her body, asked if
she were not painted. So great was the concourse
of people that the gates had to be shut against them.
" Barbara," wrote Mile. Le Gras, " was one of the
oldest and most faithful of the company, and God
had honored her in her sickness with the most strik
ing marks of being His servant, commencing thus
in this world to recompense her fidelity." On
this consideration she wished not only to recom
mend her to the prayers of the whole congregation,
as she did each of the Sisters deceased, but she
wished a special veneration and attachment shown
her. For this purpose she summoned all the Sisters
to a High Mass chanted in the church of the Mis
sionaries, and to a Conference in which the virtues of
Sister Barbara were made the subject of reflection,
such Conference being only held for the most holy.
Two of her companions came from Chateaudun to
recount the traits of virtue which they had wit-

*Dec. 27, 1658.

3i 6 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

nessed ; afterwards each of those who had known
her in Paris or elsewhere expatiated on what they
had seen in her. They praised particularly her
firmness in executing the orders given her, her
exactness to rule, her detachment from everything,
her generosity in treading under foot all human
respect. When it came Mile. Le Gras turn to
speak, she treated of her meekness, and related a
circumstance which had come under her own obser
vation of the affability and kindness shown by
Barbara to a Sister who had committed pretty
serious faults against her. " What !" she answered
when the other asked pardon, " shall I not suffer
something from you when you have so much to
suffer from me?" After this trait, which seemed to
support the counsel ordinarily given by Mile. Le
Gras, she summed up all that had been just said of
this holy life : " See, my dear Sisters, if it is not well
to persevere in the love of God."*

Alas ! these beautiful fruits dropping from the tree
indicated but too surely the approach of autumn.
These successive losses were only so many precursory
signs of that which was threatening and would soon
spread sorrow and desolation throughout the com
pany.

* Letter to Sr. Anne Ardemont, November 13, 1659.

CHAPTER XVI.

1659 1660.

Last Illness of Mile. Le Gras Her Death Her Funeral Her

Tomb.

MONG the masterpieces of modern art is
one representing 1 a mother, a saint, al
ready transfigured, her features worn by
suffering- and transparent as her veil ;
her eyes fixed on. heaven, holding on to earth only
by the hand of her son, she is ready to depart and
ripe for eternity. Such, in this moment, appears
the venerable woman whose life we have en
deavored to retrace. Her soul on high, she seems
detained on earth only by her love for her Daughters ;
the day will come when that tie shall no longer ar
rest her flight.

Several times of late years Mile. Le Gras had
made an apprenticeship of death, or, as we might
say, a trial of it. In May 1656 she was expected
surely to die ; but our Lord " drew her out of the
agony," as she said herself, and " she had to be
resigned to a prolongation of her exile."* " It did
not please the goodness of God to blot me out of
the earth, although I have merited such for a long

* Letter to the Abbe Vaux, June 14, 1656.

3i8 Life of Mile. Lc Gras.

time " she wrote to Sister Frangoise de Mes-
nage* "and I must wait the order of His provi
dence." A private notef informs us how she was
to wait. " Recovering from my late severe sickness,
I asked M. Vincent, our most honored Father, with
what disposition I should take up the resolution of
living longer, and his charity told me with the reso
lution to deny my satisfactions and renounce myself."
This advice astonishes our tepidity, since life for
many years had been perpetual suffering for her
and we know not what else she had to conquer in
this respect. But God, so merciful to our weakness,
has, in regard to the saints, requirements whose ex
tent our ignorance cannot measure, often advancing
the work of their sanctification by multiplying ex
terior accidents, privations, and sorrows.

It was to be thus with Mile. Le Gras. Some weeks
after this a severe fall left long and cruel traces. The
following year she had a swelling on her sho ulder
which was treated by bleeding a remedy much in
in vogue her time, the abuse of which was often more
fatal than the disease itself. Finally, on August 22,
1657, she wrote that she had been very ill ; and in July
1659, that she was still alive, but almost in constant
relapses since Easter. Yet she did not interrupt her
vigilance, requiring strict account from her first
assistant of the prayers of the community and their
exactitude, and being filled with joy to hear the Sis
ters repairing to the chapel in the morning. On the

*June 10, 1656. f Oct. 30, 1656.

Last illness of Mile. Le Gras. 3 1 9

least respite from suffering she was at work imme
diately. Possessed with the idea that something
more was wanting regarding the spirituality of the
company, she drew up a memorial on the subject
and sent it to St. Vincent. She superintended the
construction of a new building, for which Provi
dence more than once sent her money on the very
day she had to pay the workmen. She continued
also to direct retreats for ladies ; one worthy of re
mark at this time was that of the Baroness Mirepoix,
who after her retreat went to work with the Ladies
of Charity.

She had always been tormented by the fear of
not having the assistance of St. Vincent at her last
moments. One word from him could dissipate
her greatest alarm and calm her wildest terrors.
Those who have read St. Vincent s life have found
Mme. de Gondy possessed by the same fear. The
great age and declining health of St. Vincent justified
this disquietude on the part of Louise. He had at
tained his eighty-fifth year, but that did not deter
him from rising every day at four o clock in the morn
ing, fasting rigorously, and sleeping on a single straw-
mattress ; but his limbs could with difficulty support
him. Thus he had to discontinue his visits to the
community of the Daughters of Charity, although so
near. Soon after, to complete the sacrifice, he could
not descend to the parlor of Saint- Lazarus for the Con
ferences,* and at length he appeared no longer, even

* The last was held Dec. 14, 1659.

320 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

in the chapel. The grief of Mile. Le Gras at this
expected separation is easy to understand. " I have
nothing to offer to our Lord," she said, * " if not the
only consolation which His goodness had given me
for thirty-five years."

Correspondence with this faithful guide of her
life, who since her vocation had held a large space
in her existence, was now her only resource ; and
yet St. Vincent answered rarely, although it re
quired no long letters. " The poor are content with
little." " Visits and business increased so much that
with difficulty we could have an answer. See to
what a state it pleases Divine Providence to bring
us." Yet, always submissive, she adds : " I accept
it for His love, in the way He ordains. May His
good pleasure be for ever accomplished ! It seems
to me that our Divine Lord has put me in a state to
suffer henceforth everything in peace." f This res
ignation was more than ever beneficent and necessary,
as M. Portail was also very ill, and was not to be seen.
" The great lords alone see him ; he has a little
hermitage at the end of the enclosure, from which he
will not budge, and he comes rarely to the Confer
ence." \ Hence solitude was deepening around her
soul, prepared by all these bereavements for the great
sacrifice.

February 4, 1660, shortly after writing to Poland

* Letter to St. Vincent, Dec. 19, 1659.

f Letter to St. Vincent, sending a picture, "Jesus Crowned with
Thorns," Jan. 4, 1660.

\ Letter to Sister Mathurine Guerin, Jan. 9, 1660.

Last illness of Mile. Le Gras. 321

to a Sister whose courage had been somewhat shaken
by the commotions of the war,* she was attacked by
a fever which, at the end of eight days, became so
violent that all hope of saving her appeared lost.
She suffered much without complaining or wishing
to be pitied. " It is necessary that pain should be
where sin has abounded," she said ; " God is just ; in
exercising justice He is merciful." The Holy Viat
icum and Extreme Unction were administered.
Michel Le Gras, his wife and daughter, were pres
ent. "My dear children," she said to them after
receiving the last Sacraments, " I pray God, the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, by the power
given to parents to bless their children, that He give
you Himself His benediction, detach you from earthly
things, and, attaching you to Himself, make you live
as good Christians." Then turning to her Daughters,
she blessed them in turn, recommending to them a
love for their vocation and the service of the poor.

Every human resource and all supernatural
means were resorted to for her relief. A stole of
St. Charles Borromeo and a relic of St. Francis
de Sales were applied, and, as she felt easier the
night following, it was thought that these great
saints had obtained a reprieve for her. Alas! it was
only a respite God had granted to a family He willed
not to overwhelm by a double affliction at the same
time.

* The queen, fleeing from the enemy, had taken refuge at Dantzig,
and taken the Sisters with her.

322 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

M. Portail received the last Sacraments on the
same day as Mile. Le Gras, although not seeming so
ill as she was. On the Hth of February, however,
he breathed his last, after a life of seventy years,
forty-five years of which were passed in the Congre
gation of the Mission. "He had always feared
death," St. Vincent wrote; "but seeing it approach,
he beheld it with calmness, and holily and sweetly
died as he had lived."

As to Mile. Le Gras, she lived for nearly three weeks
without fever, continuing faithful to the end in her love
for the poor, and wishing to be informed of the aid they
received in the house or at their homes. She also gave
necessary orders that nothing might be wanting to
them.

On March Qth the fever returned, with a com
mencement of gangrene in the arm. On the I2th she
asked to receive Communion a second time. When
told that the priest of Saint-Laurence promised her
that blessing for the next day, she expressed aloud her
joy and gratitude. " God be blessed ! God be blessed !"
And during the night she repeated, " What happiness,
my Lord ; if I live 1 shall receive You to-morrow !"
She communicated with such effusions of respect and
love as deeply moved all the assistants. The priest of
Saint-Laurence asked her to give her blessing once
more to her Daughters, and she consented. " My dear
Sisters," she said to them, resuming in that solemn
moment what had been the passion of her life and
the supreme wish of her heart, " I continue to ask

Last illness of Mile. Le Gras. 323

the blessing of God for you, and beg Him to give
you grace to persevere in your vocation and serve
Him in the way He demands of you. Take great
care to serve the poor, and above all live well
together in great union and cordiality, loving one
another, imitate the union of the life of our Saviour,
and beg the Holy Virgin to be your only Mother."
She added that she was dying in great esteem of their
vocation, and if she lived one hundred years she would
ask nothing for them but to be faithful to it.

After this last advice to her Daughters, she
wished to say farewell to the Father of her soul.
She sent him a message to that effect, begging
him to write her with his own hand some word of
consolation; but the Saint, to secure her one merit
more for eternity, would not grant the favor asked,
and contented himself with sending her word by one
of his priests that, if she were going in advance, he
hoped to meet her in heaven. Although nothing
could be more painful than this last sacrifice, she
accepted it without any apparent regret.

Several ladies came afterwards to visit her, and one
of them asked if she did not rejoice on going to possess
the glory of heaven. "Ah! it is inexpressible," an
swered the sick lady, " but I am not worthy of it."
The Duchess of Ventadour,* not wishing to leave her,
sat by her bed the greater part of the night of March

* Marie de la Guiche, second wife of Charles de Levis, Duke of
Ventadour. When an infant her mother took her to the Carmelites
to receive the benediction of Mother Madeleine.

324 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

14, sharing the care necessary between Sisters Juli-
anne, Barbara, and Frances of Paula. Towards six
o clock in the morning, Mile. Le Gras, always detached
from herself, urged them to take some rest, promising
to let them know when the time would come. Her
ardor for prayer redoubled as her strength declined ;
and as if to give a last proof of her attachment to
the Church, she made use of her language, repeat
ing with Job, " Have pity on me, because the hand
of the Lord hath touched me," and with David,
" Look on me, and have mercy on me, for I am
alone and poor." For a moment her mind wan
dered, and she murmured, "Take me out of here."
A priest of the Mission, who was assisting, presented
the cross, saying, " Jesus Christ did not ask to come
down from the cross ;" she answered, " Oh no ; He
remained on it." She added, " Let me go, because
my Saviour comes for me." A moment later a
thought of approaching judgment made her fear.
" O my God !" she said, " must I appear before my
Judge?" The priest answered her by this verse of
the Psalm : " To Thee I have lifted up my soul.
My God, in Thee have I hope." She finished it
herself : " I shall not be confounded."

In the morning, Sisters from the Foundling came
to see her. They knelt around her bed, but she bade
them rise ; and being scarcely able to speak, yet she
found strength sufficient to give them her constant
advice : " Take great care in serving the poor."

Finally, at eleven o clock, she had her bed-curtains

Death of Mile. Le Gras. 325

drawn aside to warn her Daughters, as she had
promised, that her hour was approaching, and she
entered on her agony. It lasted half an hour, during
which her eyes were constantly raised to heaven.
She followed the prayers and recommendation of
the soul to the end, the Duchess of Ventadour hold
ing the lighted taper for her. Then she wished once
more to bless her Daughters kneeling around her,
and, making a great effort, she said: " My dear Sis
ters, I wish that all our Sisters were here ; but you
can tell it to the others. I pray our Lord to give
you the grace to live true Daughters of Charity,
in union and charity one with the other, as God
requires of you." Like St. John she had always
the same thought, the same advice to give to her
children. The priest having proposed to give her
the benediction at the moment of death, which
Pope Innocent X. had granted to her and her com
panions, " It is not time yet," she murmured, quite
low ; a little after she appeared to want something
with great earnestness, and they asked if the time
were come. Striking her breast three times, she
said " Yes," with much earnestness. From that
time she spoke no more, and requested the cur
tains to be closed around her, as if to sleep. Fifteen
minutes after she sweetly slept in God. This was
Passion-Monday, March 15, 1660, between eleven
o clock and noon. The priest of Saint-Laurence (her
parish), to whom she had made her general confession,
was present, and exclaimed, " What a beautiful soul,

326 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

taking- with it the grace of its baptism !" Thus
in his enthusiasm anticipating the language of
history.

The body remained exposed that day and the
next, and received numerous proofs of public vene
ration. The Wednesday following her funeral took
place. To satisfy the desire expressed in her will,
the funeral was modest. " If anything were done
for her different from the other Sisters, it would sig
nify that in death she was not worthy to be a true
Sister of Charity and servant of the members of
Jesus Christ." * Although she had requested to be
interred near the church of Saint-Lazarus, in a little
court that was formerly a cemetery, Saint Vincent
granted the petition of the priest of Saint-Laurence,
who solicited for his church the honor of receiving a
deposit so dear to his parish, and she was placed in
the Visitation f chapel, where it had been her cus
tom to pray, and outside of which were ranged
the graves of the Sisters. A large cross, with this
inscription, " Spes Unica," according to her recom
mendation, was suspended over the place where she
reposes and reproduced outside, thus connecting her
tomb with the tombs of her Daughters.

The first author who wrote her life adds here : " It
seems that God was not satisfied to make known the
merit of His faithful servant through the good He

* Will of Mile. LeGras.

f This chapel, the first on the right on entering the church, is now
dedicated to our Lady of La Salette.

The Tomb of Mile. Le Gras. 327

effected by her ministry during life, but He would
also reveal her glory by extraordinary effects oper
ated at her tomb. From time to time there came
from it a vapor which exhaled a delicious perfume
similar to that of the violet and iris. Numbers of
persons bore witness to it ; and, more surprising still,
the Sisters who came there to pray were so per
fumed that they carried the odor with them to the
sick Sisters and into the infirmary of the house. I
might add the experience which I have had of it
several times, if it were of any consideration in
in this place ; and I can truly say that after taking
every precaution possible to discover if there
were not some natural cause for it, I could find
none."*

The personal qualities of this author, and the ap
probation given his book by five prelates and five
doctors of the Sorbonne, confer incontestable value
on this testimony. Gobillon was priest of the parish
of Saint-Laurence, and the marvellous phenomenon of
which he wrote took place in his time. The truth
of his words is confirmed by his contemporaries.
Nothing, therefore, authorizes us to doubt the
truth of a favor not uncommon in the history
of the servants of God. " But," continues our
author, " whatever be the nature of this odor from
the tomb of this servant of the poor, there is one all
spiritual from the example of her life, which is a
miraculous work of grace and the most glorious

* Gobillon, op. cit., pp. 185, 186.

328 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

mark of her sanctity." This odor has not ceased to
spread and to perfume the Church, and more than
one soul has wished, without judging in anticipation
the decision of supreme authority, that the precious
ashes of her whose story it falls on us to relate may
never leave the tomb of their repose except for a
place on our altars.

In the eighteenth century, after the beatification
of Mme. de Chantal, the Sisters of Charity received
letters expressing the desire that "the same honor
might be granted to Mme. Louise de Marillac."*
The Abbe of Saint-Fonds wrote to them : " To judge
of her works by the great good which followed them,
she merits to be declared blessed ; " and he added :
" All Paris, where your Mother was born, will be with
you ; and as it acknowledged a little shepherdess for
its patron and treasure, it would have a second in
Louise de Marillac." This thought seemed so truth
ful, that when the Sisters of Charity came into the
possession of the remains of their foundress, the Su
perioress f and officers, acting in the name of and for
the rest of the community, had to bind themselves
by a solemn act, in presence of the priest of Saint-
Laurence, " to let her feasts be celebrated in that
parish and make to it a present of part of the relics,
in case that God, manifesting the sanctity of His faith
ful servant, would permit her to be honored in the
Church."

*Arch. of the Mission.

f Sister Marie-Anne Bonnejoye. The paper, dated 1755, is pre
served in the Archives of the Mission.

The Heritage of the Daughters of Charity. 329

More than one hundred years have rolled away
since this engagement, and two hundred since the
death of Mile. Le Gras, and the seed she sowed has
not ceased to increase.

At the hour in which we write, twenty thousand
of her Daughters, spread over the two hemispheres,
are everywhere giving new life to her charity.
Collecting and sheltering children, serving the sick,
consoling the poor, carrying aid to the wounded and
the prisoner in fine, accomplishing towards the lit
tle ones those acts of mercy which the Saviour has
held up to us as characteristic of the " kingdom of
heaven" in this world ; renewing their work every
day without fail and without noise is not this, for
them, the mark of their origin, the features of their
race, the heritage and fruit of their Mother s lessons ?
And is it not still more for her the ever-subsisting
proof of a sanctity that we have, alas ! ill succeeded
in bringing out of obscurity, but which we pray God
one day to make manifest ?

CHAPTER XVII,

Conference on the Virtues of Mile. Le Gras Translation of her Re
mains What became of them during the Revolution and after
wards.

|HE day after the death of Mile. Le Gras,
St. Vincent wrote to all the houses of the
Daughters of Charity announcing the loss
they had sustained, and recommending to
their prayers the holy soul which " he had great
reason to believe in possession of glory;" being sick,
four months elapsed before he was able, as he wished,
to assemble his dear Daughters to speak to them of
their Mother.

At length, July 24th, he assembled them at Saint-
Lazarus, where, Sister Jeanne Loret tells us,
they found means of seeing him without giving
him the trouble of coming down to the parlor.
" Our honored Father is well, thank God, in mind
and heart, but .... he can no longer rise without
assistance. Let us prepare ourselves for the will of
God, for he can scarcely survive this winter."*
Everything contributed to make this reunion a solemn
time: the intention which brought them together,
and the age of him who seemed also taking leave of
his Daughters while presiding over the last testimony
of veneration given to " this great servant of God."

* Letter addressed to Mathurine Guerin.

Conference upon the Virtues of Mile. Le Gras. 331

A faithful hand has preserved for us the details of
this meeting. It is a portrait of Mile. Le Gras taken,
almost the day after her death, by those who knew
her best, her father according to grace, and her
daughters by adoption. Hence we believe we ought
to give the Conference entire, although at the risk of
repeating the portions of it already quoted in the
course of this work. We shall evoke the gratitude of
the reader by offering him, in all its freshness and life
a document still new to him :

" Monsieur our honored Father," writes the Sister,
whose name we know not, but to whose faithful
hand we are indebted for these details, " having
reached the place of conference and invoked the
assistance of the Holy Spirit, as was his custom,
spoke to us as follows : My dear Sisters, I give
God thanks for having preserved me to this hour,
that I may see you all once more assembled to
gether. You may well imagine how much I wished
to be able to do so before the extreme illness
of Mile. Le Gras ; but I also had a sickness which
greatly enfeebled me. That was the good pleasure
of God, and I believe He permitted it only for the
greater perfection of the person of whom we are going
to speak.

" As the Lord has also disposed of M. Portail, who
always had great zeal for the sanctification of your
company, if we say something of him en passant, it
will not be out of place.

" But it is principally of Mile. Le Gras that we

332 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

now treat: of her virtues those above all which
you propose most especially to imitate ; for you
should follow her example if you wish to be good
Daughters of Charity. This Conference will have
three points, as usual. The first, the reasons why
the Daughters of Charity should entertain themselves
with the virtues of such of their Sisters as have gone
to God ; and particularly with those of their very
dear Mother, Mile. Le Gras. Second point, what are
the virtues remarked in her. Third, which of her
virtues strike us most, and which do we propose
most to imitate, by the grace of God/ "

The first Sister whom the Saint called on could
not speak ; * sorrow and tears were choking her voice.
She could not recall the thought of her good Mother
without, at the same time, recalling to mind that she
had lost her. She conquered herself in a little while,
as we shall see farther on. He had to ask another,
and she replied : " The first reason which occurs to
me, Father, why we should go over the virtues of our
most honored Mother is to give thanks to God for
them ; the second is to persuade us to imitate them;
and if we do not, it will be a great subject of confu
sion for us before God, because He gave her to us as
a model which we ought to follow. As to the virtues
which I have remarked in her, the first is that she
always had her mind on God, above all in her pains
and sickness, in all of which she considered only the

*This was Sister Julienne Loret.

Conference upon the Virtues of Mile. Le Gras. 333

good pleasure of God. She was never heard to
complain of her infirmities ; on the contrary, she
always appeared content and gay. Secondly, she
had a great love for the poor, and took great
pleasure in serving them. I have seen her receiving
the poor creatures just out of prison ; she washed
their feet, bound up their wounds, and dressed them
in the garments of her son. Thirdly, she had great
charity for infirm Sisters; she went often to visit
the infirmary ; she was happy to do them some
little service ; she took great care to assist them in
death ; and if it were at night, she arose, unless when
she was very sick. When her sickness was such that
she could not go herself, she sent her assistant to do
her part, to remember her to them, and give them
some words of consolation. She endeavored also to
visit those in danger of death in the parishes of Paris.
Her tenderness for the Sisters was so great that she
had to be cautiously informed when God saw fit to
dispose of them ; and then her tears flowed in abund
ance. With a heart like hers, we are not surprised
that she entertained for her son and the other mem
bers of her family all the affection prescribed by
nature and religion. Fourthly, she carried humility
as far .as it could go. She was the first on her knees
to ask pardon of all her Sisters. I have seen her
stretched on the ground, where she wished to be
trodden under foot. She washed the dishes, and
would have done all the hard work of the house if
her strength would have permitted her. She served

334 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

at table and in the refectory, asked pardon for her
faults, and performed penance, such as holding her
arms extended or lying on the floor."

M. Vincent having asked another what she re
marked, she said : " Father, Mademoiselle had great
prudence in everything. It seemed that she knew all
our faults, for she mentioned them before we had time
to speak of them to her ; but she used great prudence
in her admonitions. She recommended us always
not to seek our own interests in our actions, but only
the glory of God. She was also truly interior."

"My Sisters," St. Vincent continued, "a very es
sential virtue has just been remarked in your worthy
Mother. Truly I never knew a person possessed of
more prudence than she. She possessed it to the
highest point, and I wish with all my heart that the
company had this virtue so necessary to it. It con
sists in seeing in what manner we should comport
ourselves on all occasions, and above all in examining
well the means, the time, and the place of making the
remarks we are sometimes obliged to make. May it
please God, my Sisters, to give you this virtue ac
cording to His knowledge of your necessity for it,
since ordinary prudence will not suffice for you. You
have to treat with persons of rank and with the poor;
and you ought to know how to comport yourselves
exactly in these different circumstances. And what

J

will teach you? Prudence. There is a false pru
dence which makes one disregard the time and place,
and hence makes one act inconsiderately. It is very

Conference upon the Virtues of Mile. Le Gras. 335

difficult not to fall into this fault. Alas! my God,
there is no religious house where it is not found.
Nevertheless it is very dangerous ; and you know
that there have been some among you who by it have
lost their vocation. If there is imprudence in your
company, there will be as much evil said of it on one
side as there is good on the other. At Narbonne the
most beautiful eulogiums are said of our Sisters, be
cause their modesty and circumspection are admira
ble. Elsewhere they say : There are Sisters without
prudence, who do not mind what they do. Prudence,
then, my Sisters, prudence everywhere; with pru
dence you will everywhere have tranquillity ; without
it you will everywhere have trouble and disorder.
But, to have it, you must ask it of God. And who
will help you to obtain it? Your good Mother, who
is in heaven ; she has not less chanty for you in that
happy abode than she had on earth ; she has still
more, and in a manner more perfect. Address your
selves then to her; for although we cannot honor in
public worship the dead who are not canonized, yet
we can pray to them in private."

After these reflections, M. Vincent asked another
Sister what she had remarked in the virtuous de
parted.

" Father," she replied, " I remarked that she
desired very much for the company to preserve its
spirit of humility and poverty. She often said, We
are the servants of the poor, consequently we ought
to be more poor than they. "

336 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

" You are right," said our most honored Father,
" to say that your good Mother esteemed poverty
much ; to be convinced of it we need only see
how she was clothed ; but although clothed very
poorly, she thought it too much, and asked per
mission to live henceforth like the poor. And
whatever belongs to the company, she always wished
it kept in that spirit. In fact, this is the sov
ereign means to preserve it. Poverty is a virtue
which our Saviour practised on earth and which He
wished His apostles to practice. The Master and dis
ciples were poor in their clothing. The same voice
which said, Wo, to ye rich, also said, The foxes have
holes, and the birds their nests : but the Son of Man
hath not where to lay his head. It was with much
wisdom, then, that your pious Mother made you prac
tise exact poverty -in everything for twenty-five years :
in your clothing, your nourishment, and all your
needs. What a misfortune should any one of you relax
on this point, and, instead of being satisfied with the
frugality of the refectory, should seek the ladies
table ! Ah ! if unhappily some one should say, We
are not well nourished; * Such a way to live, etc.,
my Sisters, you should cry out, Wolf ! wolf ! You
must send away such as the spirit of the demon, which
must be chased away at the commencement. My
Sisters, preserve poverty, and poverty will preserve
you. Content yourselves to be clothed in rags, but
not to depart from your simplicity. Imprint, O Lord,
these maxims on our hearts ; engrave them so deeply

Conference upon the Virtues of Mile. Le Gras. 337

there that, seeing a Daughter of Charity, one may see
resplendent in her the spirit of poverty and exclaim,
* Blessed be God who has given her that spirit !

After these reflections the Sister resumed her re
marks, saying, " I remarked that Mile. Le Gras
showed as much affection for one Sister as for an
other, and tried to satisfy every one."

" That is true," replied M. Vincent ; "and although
the effusion of her heart did not always appear the
same, I know she had love for all."

" Father," added the Sister, " Mademoiselle had
great zeal for the salvation of souls. She was very
interior, and her mind much occupied with God."

M. Vincent attached much importance to this last
article. After proving that to be interior was to have
the mind and heart elevated to God, and to be disen
gaged from all affection to the world, from parents or
country, in a word, from all earthly things, he ex
horted the Sisters to say often, " Destroy in me, O
Lord, all that is displeasing to Thee, and grant that I
may be no more so full of myself; grant that in each
of my actions I may have no other desire than that
of pleasing Thee."

Again he returned to Mile. Le Gras ; and after re
marking that the greatest saints were not without their
shading of imperfection, he said that the little hasti
ness sometimes perceptible in her was nothing, and,
although she humbled herself for it a moment after,
there would be hard work to find any sin. To say
that hers was like the anger of Jesus Christ when He

338 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

drove the venders from the Temple would be saying
what is right. " Be ye angry and sin not," said the
royal prophet. He added that " for the thirty -eight
years of their acquaintance he had known in that
lady only a soul always pure ; pure in her youth,
pure in her married life, in her widowhood. In her
confessions she wept over her slightest faults with
such bitterness that he could scarcely appease her."

From all these remarks our most honored Father
concluded that each one of those to whom he spoke
ought to use all her efforts to become interior that
is to say, to occupy herself with God alone, and see
but Him in all her actions. "Thus, my dear Sisters,
when you are tempted to yield to anything against
your rule, you must say to yourselves, I am a
Daughter of Charity, and consequently Daughter
of Mile. Le Gras, who, notwithstanding the inclina
tions of nature, knew so well how to conquer herself
and occupy herself with God alone. Ah ! I will
follow her example and overcome myself. "

But since tepidity makes excuses and intrenches it
self in the idea that it is not given to all to imitate
privileged souls, whom God conducts by ways of
predilection, M. Vincent, who profited by every
thing to conduct to virtue, demonstrated that the
Daughters of Charity could and ought to walk in the
footsteps of their Mother in Jesus Christ.

A letter which he had just received from Poland
furnished a proof of this important truth. One of
his priests in Varsovia had written him that the

Conference upon the Virtues of Mile. Le Gras. 339

queen had made a long journey, leaving at her
departure the poor Daughters of Charity to keep
order everywhere; that they had acquitted them
selves so well of this task, and with such prudence
and general satisfaction, that the queen on her return
was charmed with accounts from all quarters, and
went to spend an entire day with them in their house,
and gave them every testimony of singular affection.

" See, my Sisters, what odor your company is
placed in by a life truly interior, truly devoted to God.
Take this lustre from it and you take all. What evil is
done by a Sister who walks a contrary path ! She
gives talk to the whole city ! What do I say ? to the
whole province! The priests, the princes even, are
told of her bad conduct. Yes, my daughters, the evil
done by one is enough to destroy the whole company.
Let us then redouble our zeal, and ask of God inces
santly that the whole community and each of its mem
bers may be sanctified and their number increased."

M. Vincent made two others speak. The first said
simply that she had nothing to say, if not that the
holy deceased was a mirror on which the company
had only to keep their eyes and be perfect. " I have
always recognized in Mademoiselle so much support
and charity for us that it consumed her." " Father,"
said the second, " she had so much charity for me
that when she perceived in me the least trouble of
mind, she spoke to me with great sweetness."

The Sister who had been spoken to first and could
not respond for weeping now rose and said : " Father,

340 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

if you think it well for me to speak, I will try to do
so." " You will do me a great pleasure, my daughter,"
answered our most honored Father, who was so over
come that he could not restrain his tears.

After saying in few words that it was just for
the Daughters to entertain themselves on the vir
tues of their dear Mother, as much for the glory of
God as to animate themselves to follow her ex
ample, which they were obliged to, since God had
made use of her to teach them how to conduct
themselves in order to be pleasing in His sight, she
continued thus: "In regard to the virtues practised
by this worthy Mother, it would need a book to
write them and minds much more elevated than ours
to relate them. Nevertheless, as obedience requires
it of me, I must do it; but when I shall have said all
that memory can furnish there will still remain much
left unsaid. Her admirable humility showed itself on
so many occasions that they cannot be recounted. That
it was which made her so respectful to all her Sisters,
so that she was the first to salute them, to speak to
them always in a tone of supplication, to thank them
so affectionately for any service rendered her, and
for the labor or trouble attending certain employ
ments, so that I was oftentimes quite ashamed. I
have seen her humble herself so far as to beg me to
warn her when she did wrong. My embarrassment was
great because I could find no occasion to do what I was
commanded, although I watched for it in order to do
what was required of me under obedience."

Conference upon tke Virtues of Mile. Le Gras. 341

" You are right, my Sister," said M. Vincent.
" That is what I told you already. It was difficult
to remark a fault in her. Not that she had none.
The just fall several times a day ; but these faults
were so slight that they were imperceptible." " Con
tinue, my daughter."

" When it happened sometimes, Father, that
some Sisters would not take their admonition
in good part and would be angry in my presence,
she would ask me if she were not the cause, and
if she had not spoken harshly or otherwise than
was right; and when I had assured her that she
had not, she always excused those who had
showed discontent, as also those whose faults had
been reported. We must suffer, she said. God has
chosen us for that. We must give example to others
and be ver} 7 courageous to support our Sisters. She
has sometimes sent for me on purpose to ask pardon
when she thought she had given me pain, although it
was I who was in the wrong ; and she often prevented
me when I would try to be the first to excuse myself.

She always accused herself with great humility
in the Conferences on Fridays. She imputed to her
self all the faults committed in the community, as
if God had permitted them as a punishment for her
cowardice in His service. She had great charity
for the poor, whom she served with great pleasure, and
for the Sisters, whom she supported and excused as
much as possible. It is true she reproved with an
air of severity when it was necessary; but it was

342 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

always on the principle of charity. She had a
mother s compassion for those who suffered in body
or mind. She kept for several years Sisters who
might have been sent away for their imperfections.
She always waited to see if they would correct them
selves: and how many, perhaps, have been saved by
that? She had so great a love for holy poverty
that she never would consent to wear anything new,
although she gave to others very willingly whatever
was necessary. She would never consent to have a
cloak made from a piece of serge given her for that
purpose. Hers was all worn and pieced in different
colors; but she would never consent to leave it aside.
If something new was left for her to wear, she had it
taken away the moment she perceived that it was
new. She never wore a head-dress but those which
she believed were bought at the second-hand store.
One of her most ardent wishes was that the com
pany after her death would preserve the same spirit of
poverty and frugality which she judged necessary for
its existence. It was a torture for her to see that in
her infirmities it was necessary to nourish her dif
ferently from the rest of her Sisters. She humbled
herself and asked pardon for her necessities as if they
were fatilts. She had the most admirable confidence
in Divine Providence, and unceasingly exhorted her
Daughters to trust in that beneficent Hand which
never failed those who leaned on it for support. Her
submission to the will of God was equal to her confi
dence. This submission, which is more apparent in

Conference upon the Virtiies of Mile. Le Gras. 343

infirmities, shone with lustre in all her sickness, but
especially in that which took her from us. She suffered
the most violent grief in being deprived of the pres
ence of those dearest to her on earth ; and although
she could not but feel keenly all these trials, she never
testified the slightest annoyance. She had the great
est meekness, and she received so sweetly all the
Sisters who went to her that they were always edi
fied. To judge of the wisdom of her guidance, we
have only to cast our eyes upon the good state in
which she left the company in both spiritual and
temporal matters. But to wish to mention all her
virtues would be to wish never to finish."

As our honored Father had intimated in the be
ginning of the Conference that we might say a word
of M. Portail, a good Sister who was full of venera
tion for him spoke as follows: She had remarked in
him a very great charity for his neighbor; so much
that, in midwinter he went in the mud into the
chapel to hear a poor Sister s confession, saying that
our Lord had done much more for even a Samaritan
woman. She also praised his charity and zeal for
the salvation of souls; zeal that went so far that he
could not restrain his tears when a poor Sister lost
her vocation.

Finally, M. Vincent closed the Conference with
these familiar words, which show so well his
humility : " I beg our Lord, although I am an un
worthy and miserable sinner, to give you His bless
ing, by the merit of that which He gave to His Apostles

344 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

when He departed from them, and I pray that He
detach you from all earthly things and attach you to
those of heaven. May the blessing of God the Father
Almighty, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost
descend upon you and remain forever. Amen."

What Solomon had predicted for the strong
woman had been accomplished in Louise. Her
children had arisen and had called her blessed. But
after this homage rendered to " the great servant
whom God had called to Himself," it still remained,
before they finished, to imbibe her spirit in order to
choose the one who was to have the painful honor of
succeeding her. God permitted St. Vincent to ac
complish this task. Contrary to the sad forebodings
of several, he was able, on August 27, 1660, to as
semble once more the Daughters of Charity around
him. This was the last ! With his usual openness
of heart he told them that one day Mile. Le Gras
beino- sick, he had asked her which one of her Sisters

>

she judged capable and the most proper to replace
her. After some moments of hesitation and reflection,
she said : " Sir, as you have chosen me with the per
mission of Divine Providence, it seems to me that the
first time she ought not to be named by the plurality
of votes, but that you yourself ought to appoint her.
For my part, I think that Marguerite Chetif would
be very right. She is a Daughter who has succeeded
everywhere, and everywhere been good. At Arras,
where she is, she has done well, and has been very
courageous among the soldiers." " And as Mile. Le
Gras stopped at this point, I also," added the Saint,

Mile. Le Gras Successor in Office. 345

" stop at her advice." This said, obedient to the last
wish of the foundress, he named Marguerite Chetif
Superioress of the Daughters of Charity.

It was his last will. Three weeks after, the little
company, made doubly orphans, celebrated the
funeral obsequies of St. Vincent, September 20, 1660.
During the ceremony Sister Marguerite was remark
able for her grief. " She excited the pity of every
one," we read in a letter of the time. On coming
from the church her Sisters, commencing with the
oldest, went and embraced her, renewing aloud their
promise of obedience.

" Be consoled, Mother," they said to her, with all
cordiality possible, " be consoled ; you will not have
as much trouble as you think; we promise to be
more docile and more affectionate than ever." *

The lessons of Mile. Le Gras had borne their fruit ;
but if her spirit was with them, her mortal remains
reposed too far from them and in too lowly a rest
ing-place. To give them more honorable sepulture,
to have possession of her remains, was the most
ardent desire of the Daughters of Charity, and they
soon set about the work.

In concert with M. Le Gras her son, and by the
intervention of Mme. de Miramion, they first ob
tained from the Archbishop of Paris permission to
open her tomb and replace her wooden coffin by one
of lead. Consequently, April 10, i68o,f at 9 o clock

* Letter of Marguerite Chetif, Nov. 8, 1660.

f It was Passion-Wednesday, twenty years, to the very day, after
the funeral of Mile. Le Gras.

346 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

in the evening, they proceeded to the opening of the
tomb, in presence of M. Jolly, Superior-General of
the Mission, Mathurine Guerin, then Superioress of
the Daughters of Charity, and three officers of the
community, Madame de Miramion, and a Sister of the
community, and last, Mile. Le Gras, grand-daughter
of the deceased, and M. Gobillon, parish priest of
Saint-Laurence. The bones were found intact and of
a reddish color. Mme. de Miramion rolled them in
linen she had prepared for this purpose, and placed
them herself in a new leaden coffin bearing an in
scription on copper. After all present had said a
short prayer, the remains were sprinkled with holy
water and lowered again into the tomb, where they
rested nearly one hundred years. At length, October
22, 1755, the Archbishop of Paris, yielding to the re
newed entreaties of the Daughters of Charity, per
mitted them to transport her precious remains into
their chapel in the Faubourg Saint-Denis.* There
they remained until the Revolution. In 1797 the
mother-house was confiscated and sold ; the chapel
was demolished, and also part of the build
ings, to open two streets which, by a kind of
derision, received the names of Charity and Fi
delity, and the Sisters had to purchase the bones
of their Mother for sixty livres,f in order to

*This translation was made November 22 of the same year.

f The receipt of the sixty livres, still extant, is couched in these
terms : " I acknowledge to have received from citizen Mile. Frai^oise
the sum of 60 livres for a case of lead enclosed in a box, such as has
been found in the destruction of the chapel of the forenamed Sisters

Translation of the remains of Mile. Le Gras. 347

claim them as their property. They concealed them
in a house inhabited by two of the Sisters in the
Faubourg Saint-Martin (No. 91) ; afterward, not be
lieving them sufficiently secure, they placed them in
a little case two feet long by fourteen inches wide,
the easier to hide, which they carried to No. 455
Rue Magons-Sorbonne, where the Mother Superior
and several of her companions had found refuge.

A new era for the Daughters of St. Vincent was scon
to open. On the ist Nivose, year 9 (December 21,
1800), the Minister of the Interior, Chaptal, decreed
" that help to the sick could not be assiduously ad
ministered except by persons vowed to the state of
service in the hospitals," and he directed by the en
thusiasm of charity that the citizen Deleau, so-called
Superioress of the Sisters of Charity, should form
pupils for the service of the hospitals.* He granted
for that purpose a house formerly occupied by the
orphans, No. 746 Rue Vieu-Colombier. f The
community, which had been dispersed during the
tumult, reassembled here by degrees. J By the ad-

of Charity. Given at Paris, this 3d vendemiaire, year 6 of the repub
lic." " LEBRUN-LEJEUNE."

* Moniteur ttniversel of the gth Nivose, year 9.

\ This house is now the barracks of Pompiers.

\ The Daughters of Charity, obliged by the Revolution to abandon
their costume, wore a black dress and bonnet. The fourth Sunday of
Advent, 1804, Pope Pius VII. came to visit them. He appeared as
tonished that they had not resumed their habit, and was told that no
religious community had dared to do so. He spoke of it to the em
peror, saying that the good Sisters of Charity looked like widows.
The emperor, at this request, authorized the Sisters to resume their
costume. This was in the spring of 1805.

348 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

vice of the director, M. Placiard, the remains of Mile.
Le Gras were brought here. Two of the Sisters re
ceived from the hands of the porters their precious
burden, and bore it to the chapel, where they rested
some seconds on the steps of the choir ; they then
crossed the infirmary to a hall on the second story
set apart for retreats, where the sacred remains were
deposited until further advice.

Even here the wanderer s course was not to be at
an end. June 28, 1815, the entrance of the allied forces
into the town of Saint-Denis obliged the pupils of
the Legion of Honor to take refuge in Paris, and
the house of Vieux Colombiere was assigned as
their dwelling. The Sisters of Charity received an
imperial decree to abandon the Hotel de Chatillon,
formerly inhabited by Mme. de la Valliere, * and
they had to hasten their departure. It so happened
that the foundress herself preceded them to their
new residence. One of the Mothers of the Semi
nary, Sister Gaubert, seized with fear at the ap
proach of the troops, without waiting the hour fixed
for departure, called a carriage, placed in it the
box containing the venerated remains, and, taking
her crucifix in her hand, commended herself to the
guidance of God. She was conducted to the Rue
du Bac, where all the Sisters arrived soon after.
Finally, several years later,f all fears being dispersed,
the remains of Mile. Le Gras, which had been hidden

* The beginning of this change of residence, necessitated by the in
sufficiency of Rue Vieux Colombiere, was due to M. de Champagny,
then Minister of the Interior.

f November 5, 1825.

The Tomb of Mile. Le Gras. 349

in a secluded corner of the house to this time, were
solemnly brought to that chapel so dear to the Sis
ters by an apparition of the Immaculate Virgin.
They repose now near the steps of the sanctuary.
The place is marked by a slab of black marble, on
which is engraved the epitaph of the Church of
Saint-Laurence, to which are added the dates of
subsequent translations. We shall be thanked for re
producing the text, which we took with respectful
emotion from the stone itself.

HERE LIES

MADAME LOUISE DE MARILLAC,
WIDOW OF M. LE GRAS,

SECRETARY OF COMMANDS

TO QUEEN MARIE DE MEDICIS,

FOUNDRESS AND FIRST SUPERIORESS

OF THE DAUGHTERS OF CHARITY,

SERVANT OF THE SICK POOR.

INTERRED IN THE CHAPEL OF THE VISITATION

IN THE PAROCHIAL CHURCH OF SAINT-LAURENT,

MARCH 17, l66o.

TRANSLATED OCTOBER 24, 1755,

INTO THE CHAPEL
OF THE OLD HOUSE OF THE DAUGHTERS OF CHARITY,

FAUBOURG SAINT-DENIS;
FROM THERE SHE WAS WITHDRAWN

SEPTEMBER 2$, J799J

AND, AFTER SEVERAL OTHER TRANSLATIONS,

WAS AT LAST DEPOSITED IN THIS CHAPEL

FOR THE CONSOLATION OF THE COMPANY,

NOVEMBER 5, 1824.

TRUE MOTHER OF THE POOR,

MODEL OF ALL VIRTUES,

WORTHY OF ETERNAL REPOSE,

MAY HER VENERATED DUST,

RECALLING HER CHARITY,

INFUSE HER SPIRIT.

350 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

We shall add but one word more in closing; but
that word, borrowed from the archives of the com
pany, will be more eloquent than all that could be
written of Louise de Marillac :

"The work she founded counted in 1881, in France
alone, nine hundred and twenty-three establishments ;
eight hundred and nine in the rest of Europe ; two
hundred and thirty in Asia and America: that is to
say, nearly two thousand houses where the poor are
served and God is glorified."

APPENDIX.

WILL OF MADEMOISELLE LE GRAS.

|N THE name of God, Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. Prostrate in all humility, in
the belief that God is in all places, sole
Being and Creator of all immortal souls,
with true knowledge of my own nothingness and
impotence without His grace, I humbly implore His
mercy on my misery, which has made me guilty of
so much ingratitude for His goodness. I have
offended this goodness by my sins, thus becoming
unworthy to participate in the merits of Jesus cruci
fied. Yet in these merits I place all my hope, and
supplicate the Holy Virgin to be a true Mother to
me and obtain for me pardon for the abuse I have
made of the grace of God. To the moment of my
death, and subject to the good pleasure of God, I
supplicate my good angel guardian, St. Louis, and
all the saints to help me by their intercession in
this important passage to which I submit myself,
and would were I not obliged thereto, for the love

352 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

of God, and to honor the moment of the separation of
the divine soul of my Saviour, who desires my salva
tion, that I may glorify Him eternally with the
Father and the Holy Ghost.

I protest before God, and before all creatures, that
I wish to die in the Holy Roman Catholic and Apos
tolic Church, and I command my son, as far as I can,
to do the same, it being the only path to paradise,
for which we were created. In the hope that God
will grant him this grace, I beseech His bounty to
take full possession of all that he is, to do in him and
with him His most holy will. I likewise pray Him
to water with His most efficacious grace, for time
and eternity, the blessing which, as mother, he has
empowered me to give, and which I now give him,
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost, Amen, imploring the sacred humanity
of our Saviour to have pity on our sinful souls at
the hour of our death.

I very humbly ask pardon of my good angel
and of my most honored Father and director,
by whom it has pleased the mercy of God to
hold me willingly attached to the accomplishment
of His most holy will, for the little correspond
ence and fidelity I have shown for the charitable
care that they have done me the honor to take of my
salvation. I acknowledge that without this care I
would often have turned miserably away from God.
I also most humbly ask pardon of all my dear neigh
bors whom I have disedified or scandalized by my

The Will of Mile. Le Gras. 353

sins, of those whom I have displeased or offended in
any way whatever, and of all creatures of which I
have made a bad use or contrary to the holy will
of God. I abandon myself to God to make such res
titution in this world or the next as it will please
His merciful justice to ordain.

The obligation of mother, together with the
strong natural affection I have always had for my
son, urges me to recommend him to remember the
care which, for his salvation, the goodness of God
had of his education, and to be grateful all his life,
striving never to do anything contrary to the Most
Holy Will. To aid you in this, my son, take counsel
in all your affairs of persons who are competent
and who lead good lives. And that the advice you
receive may be more useful to you, always ask it
before forming your decision ; otherwise you will
not freely give your reasons for and against the
thing you propose, and in that case you will deceive
yourself. I rely so much on the kindness of M.
Vincent that I am certain he will never refuse you
his assistance in your wants, whether temporal or
spiritual. You know our obligations yours and
mine to him, and hence I entreat you, should you
ever be so happy as to have an opportunity to serve
him or his company, you will do it with all your
heart, remembering that you are particularly obliged
to do so, not only in gratitude for his benefits re
ceived by us, but also for the service he renders to
the holy Church our Mother. Do the same, and for

354 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

the same reason, I beg- you, for the gentlemen of the
community of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet.

I beseech my son often to remember to pray for
the soul of his father, to call to mind his good life,
how he greatly feared God and was scrupulous in
keeping himself irreproachable ; especially should
he remember his patience in the great sufferings
which were sent to him in his last years, and in
which he practised very great virtue. O my son,
remember to honor always the Marillacs, and to
serve them willingly, should God ever send an occa
sion to do so. Also M. the Count and Mine, the
Countess of Maure, and all those to whom I have
the honor to be related. I know they will always
retain their affection for me, and while you comport
yourself as a man of honor they will never refuse
you assistance in your wants, as I humbly supplicate
them, remembering that their predecessors have
always obliged us in that way, doing us the honor
to acknowledge our relationship. What I say, my
God, Thou knowest to be on account of the need I
fear for my son whom Thou hast given me, and not
for vainglory.

I declare that the heirs of M. Gachier, in Au-
vergne, have on hand seven or eight hundred livres,
without the interest of said sum, since the death of
the late M. Le Gras, my husband, which sum belongs
to me as his first creditor, on account of my dowry
and agreement. I have never been able to recover
this money from M. Bonnefoy, his grandson and sole

The Will of Mile. Le Gras. 355

heir, against whom I did not wish to take proceed
ings up to this time, and I still entreat my son to
settle this affair as meekly as possible.*

I give and bequeath ten crowns of this money
mentioned in the last article, whenever it shall be
received, to the deserving poor of the town of Mont-
ferrand.

I bequeath thirty livres a year in perpetuity,
after the death of my son, to the venerable Priests of
the Mission, first established with the blessing of
God by St. Vincent, in the College des Bons-Enfants,
near the gate of Saint-Victor. This on condition that
they shall have three low Masses said every year,
viz., one on the first day of the year, the second on
the Feast of All Saints, and the third on the Im
maculate Conception of the Holy Virgin. These
Masses to be said at St. Paul s and in the chapel of
Saint-Amable. This obligation was imposed on me
at the death of my father, and I had the power to
dispose of it at my death ; this power of disposal
being given me by M. de Marillac, deceased, former
Keeper of the Seals. These aforesaid gentlemen of
the Mission shall, moreover, be obliged to give in
alms, on each day of the celebration of said Masses,
five sous to the work, five to the poor; and also two

*On the margin : "I remember that, immediately after the decease
of M. Le Gras, M. Gachier told me he wished to pay the sum, and
commenced by sending me one hundred livres or more, which I do
not remember to have receipted to his credit.

(Signed) " MARILLAC."

35 6 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

tapers, weighing one pound, to be burned All Souls
Day during the holy Mass said in the above-named
chapel, and then given to the work. They shall,
besides, feel bound to say three low Masses, one on
St. Thomas s Day, before Christmas the anniver
sary of my deceased husband and the other two on
the anniversary of my death and that of my son.
And this to honor the moment our Saviour died on
the cross, that the merit of this perpetual divine
sacrifice may be applied to those who are in the
agonies of death, and those in mortal sin to obtain
from the mercy of God an efficacious grace to con-
vert them. I leave eighteen livres to my confessor
at the parish where I shall die, in gratitude for all
the trouble his charity has taken with me, and I wish
him to employ that sum in any books or things use
ful to himself. I give six crowns to my god
daughter, who is also the god-daughter of my son,
Anne Louise Mitais, to be employed by her in pres
ents when she shall be capable of doing so, and I
recommend her to my son, in case that her mother
die. before she is either married or becomes a re-
Jigious, or is of an age to take care of herself.

I give one crown to each of the confraternities
here named, in which I have had the honor to be re
ceived, asking pardon of God for my many failings
as regards the devotions prescribed by said confra
ternities, which leads me to believe that it would be
better to be enrolled in a few and be faithful to them.
The places where I have the honor to be enrolled

The Will of Mile. Le Gras. 357

are at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, for the Confra
ternity of the Blessed Sacrament ; at the Jacobins, for
the Confraternity of the Five Wounds of our Lord ;
at the Cordeliers of the Great Convent, for the Cord
of St. Francis ; at the Jacobins of La Rue Faubourg
Saint-Honore, for the Rosary ; at the Augustinians
of the Faubourg- Saint-Germain, for the Cincture
of St. Monica; and at Saint-Laurent, for association
to the Company of the Blessed Sacrament.

I give six crowns a year to the Daughters of
Chanty my dear Sisters with whom I have had the
honor to be for several years of which eighteen
livres shall be for materials to make ointments for the
poor who come to their house. I declare that I should
be obliged to do a great deal for them if God gave me
the means, and I beg my son to be always mindful of
the charity they have done me, and to consider it a
special blessing if he ever have occasion to be em
ployed for them in which I exhort him from my
heart not to fail.

I give and bequeath ten crowns to be distributed to
the beggars on the first Sunday or feast-day after my
death, after a sermon given them by some charitable
person, who will do this for the love of God, in the
church of Saint-Laurent, or in the chapel, or rather at
Saint-Lazarus, if this be possible. I beg the preacher,
in the name of our Lord, to speak only for the poor,
teaching them their obligation to know God ; who
are the good and the wicked among the poor ; how
advantageous their condition would be for their sal-

358 -Life of Mile. Le Gras.

vation, could they use it well ; what they should do
before lowering themselves to beg; with what humility
they should ask an alms ; their obligation to serve God
and hear Mass on Sundays and feasts; make them
resolve to kneel in prayer morning and evening, and
do it for the glory of God and the good of those
souls who are lost for want of knowing the obliga
tions of their state.

I leave one crown every year in perpetuity to the
Daughters of Charity, my dear Sisters, to commence
the year of my decease, on condition that one of
them will say, every year, five rosaries for my son,
viz., on the Presentation of the Holy Virgin, her
Immaculate Conception, the third Friday of Feb
ruary, Good - Friday, and the Friday of Ember-
days and the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, between
the hours of seven and eight, on the aforesaid days,
to obtain from God a particular grace for those who
receive holy orders.

After my debts and legacies are paid, my son,
as sole heir, shall enjoy my property. After his
death, all I leave will pass to the poor, whom I con
stitute my heirs after him. In case he marries and
has children, he and his children will enjoy it accord
ing to the law regulating substituted successions ; but
I intend and will that, should he have no legitimate
offspring, the poor shall enjoy the little that God has
given me ; and for this purpose I humbly supplicate
M. Vincent de Paul, Founder and General of the
Priests of the Mission, and after him his successors,

The Will of Mile. Le Gras. 359

to look after this disposition, so that, should the sub
stitution take place, they may collect the revenues
and make the annual distribution, since I know that
their principal duty is to labor for the salvation of
the poor, for which I would willingly sacrifice my
life.

But in case that God gives the blessing of a firm
establishment to the company of Sisters of Charity
of the parishes, or if they can subsist as they have
done for several years, remaining under the direc
tion of the above-named gentlemen of the Mission, my
intention and last will is, that, with the exception of
one hundred livres which these same gentlemen of
the Mission will enjoy, the Sisters of Charity inherit,
for the ends and on the conditions aforesaid, the
little that I leave, and thus they may have more
means to assist the sick poor in the country places
where they find less aid. I pray the goodness of
-God, should He please to give any merit to this dis
position, to apply it as a means to bring down His
mercy (of which we have great need) on the soul of
my son, and on my own soul, at the moment of our
death. f

I very humbly beg M. Vincent, by the charity God
has given him for his neighbors, and by the love
he bears the sacred Humanity of our Redeemer, to
pardon me all my neglect of gratitude for the honor
he has done me in exercising so much charity to
wards my son and myself, for which I thank him
with all my heart, and beg him to continue his holy

360 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

affection for my son, to be to him a father, giving
him good counsel and aid in all his needs. I also
ask him to grant the prayer which for the love of
God I make him, and his successors should God call
him away before me, of being the executor of this
my will with my son, to whom I have proposed this
substitution. In return for their charity on this
point I promise, should God be pleased to show me
mercy and permit me to enter his paradise, to do
for them all that a soul can do.

I commit and willingly abandon my soul into the
hands of God, its creator and last end, and freely
leave my body to the earth to await the resurrection.
As to the place of my sepulture, I leave it entirely,
tinder the disposition of Divine Providence, to the
care of M. Vincent, whom I beg to remember the
great desire I have testified to be buried alongside
the wall at the foot of the church of Saint-Lazarus, in
the little court which, from bones found there, ap
pears to have been once a cemetery. 1 still greatly
desire to be buried there, and I ask it of his charity
for the love of God. I also ask that there be placed
as soon as possible against the wall in the same place
a large wooden cross with crucifix attached, and an
inscription at its foot bearing this title : " Spes
Unica." The whole to be at the expense of the little
I leave and which God has given me to dispose in
this my will.

For my funeral I declare that I do not wish any
greater expense to be incurred than what is usual in

The Will of Mile. Le Gras. 361

the funerals of our deceased Sisters ; and that should
any one desire to have it otherwise, I believe even
now that he never had any affection for me, because
it is not reasonable that my miserable body, which
has so often offended God and occasioned offence,
should be held in any consideration. Moreover,
this would be to pronounce me undeserving to ap
pear as having died a true Sister of Charity and
servant of the members of Jesus Christ, although,
nevertheless, I am unworthy of that quality.

Behold, O my God, Thy poor creature, prostrate
at the feet of Thy grandeur and majesty ! acknow
ledging herself a criminal, and deserving of hell, to
which Thy strict justice would have condemned me,
were it not for the immense love which made
Thy Son become man to deliver me. May it please
Thy Divine Majesty that I, with my son, be of the
number of those who through Thy Son will eternally
glorify Thee ! and deign to look benignly on the acts,
desires, and dispositions made in this will, drawn up
in the belief that such is Thy divine will, which has
always directed mine, and without which I protest
with all my strength never to will anything, and in
which, I affirm, i wish to terminate my life, as I have
this writing, which I have done and signed with my
own hand, this Friday, the I5th day of December,
1645. LOUISE DE MARILLAC,

By the grace of God sound of body and mind.

362 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

FIRST CODICIL.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost. This day, Feast of Holy Innocents,
in the year 1653, I have reviewed my will, which I
believed to be made in the best form in my power to
produce its effects. Accordingly, I confirm it and ap
prove of all its articles ; and inasmuch as there has
been a change in my son whom Divine Providence
has destined for marriage, and that by his contract I
have given him five hundred livres annual income,
arranged in divers deeds which I have placed in his
hands, and being assured by his own word, shortly
before his marriage, that he will have no need of my
little income, that it will be doing no wrong to him
or his children if he does not receive it, I think I
am bound in conscience to declare what follows as
my desire in the execution of my will, desiring with
all my heart that if God gives it any merit, His good
ness may apply it for the salvation of all the family
and to draw mercy on my poor soul.

First, as the gentlemen of the Mission shall not
be obliged to have the Masses mentioned in my will
said until after the death of my son, he shall enjoy
the thirty livres set apart for this purpose, which
shall be collected from the rent of the city house
which I reserve to myself; from this revenue also
shall be taken all the other legacies which I have
made, excepting the ten crowns on the money due to
me in Auvergne.

The Will of Mile. Le Gras. 363

Should it happen, unfortunately, that this revenue
be lost and that no recourse can be had to the prop
erty of Mme. de Vandy,* who sold it to me in ex
change for revenue which she owed me on her prop
erty, I pray my son still to execute this my will, in
consideration of all that he knows I have done for
him ; remembering that by the account rendered to
him after the death of his father, my good husband,
whom may God have in His mercy ! he is indebted
to me I think four thousand livres. God is my
witness that I do this act in the belief that I am
obliged to do so; and not for the purpose of hav
ing the Masses celebrated, in case the revenue be
entirely lost, because this fund was assigned for
that purpose.

In consequence of this present declaration the
deed of that revenue will remain in the hands of
the Priests of the Mission, who will enjoy the re
mainder of the income, if there be any, conjointly
with the Sisters of Charity. I beg them all to ask for
mercy on me.

Said deed will be found, with the account
above mentioned, in the drawer of my cabinet from
Germany, which I beg M. Vincent to give to my
son, together with the. other few pieces of our furni
ture, of which he will find a memorandum, if it please
God.

Thou knowest, O my God, that I am wholly

* Innocent de Marillac, cousin of Louise.

364 Life of Mile. Lc Gras.

Thine; that Thy Providence has been, by Thy
grace, the guide of my conduct in every state of
life: for which I humbly thank Thee, asking par
don now for all my forgetfulness and ingratitude.
I offer Thee this little disposition, as made by
Thy will, renouncing every other consideration.
I beg Thee by the love of Jesus crucified to give
Thy blessing to me, also to my son and his family,
that we may glorify Thee eternally.

Made and signed this day and year here men
tioned. LOUISE DE MARILLAC.

SECOND CODICIL.

This day, Thursday, being the eleventh of May,
four hours from sunrise, in the year one thousand six
hundred and fifty-six, at the command of the lady
Louise de Marillac, widow of Michel Le Gras, de
ceased, who, while living, was equery to the late queen,
Marie de Medicis, the undersigned notaries were
brought to the house where the lady lived, in the
Faubourg Saint-Denis, opposite the church of Saint-
Lazarus, where they found her in bed, sick in body,
although strong in mind, memory, and understand
ing, as appeared by her words and bearing : who said
and declared that she had made her will, written en
tirely by herself on the fifteenth of December, one
thousand six hundred and forty-five, also a codicil
written by herself on the day of Holy Innocents of
the year one thousand six hundred and fifty-three.
Having read the will and codicil during her sickness,

The Will of Mile. Le Gras. 365

she wished to make a new codicil, and for this end
dictated and named to said notaries as follows :

Having reason to be satisfied with the conduct of
Michel Antoine Le Gras, equery, her only son, bai
liff in Saint-Lazarus and counsellor in the Court of Ex
change, and with the young lady Le Clerc, his wife, on
account of the respect and tokens of affection which
she had received from her since their marriage ; being
assured that, should said son die without children, his
goods and those he might have from said lady, his
mother, would be used for the benefit of the poor,
she therefore has revoked and does revoke the sub
stitution which she made of her property by afore
said will for the benefit of the poor ; wishing that her
son above named enjoy the same and freely dispose
of it as he. pleases. She wills and ordains, according
to said will and codicil, that the revenue which be
longed to her on the city house be for the benefit
of the gentlemen of the Mission, to whom she has
made abundant legacies and gifts on the conditions
named by said will and codicils, and that they com
mence to receive them and accomplish the conditions
prescribed on the day of the decease of her son. More
over, to give on the first dividend received, thirty
livres for the poor of Saint-Laurent, her parish, and
eighteen livres for the legacies which she had made
by her will to her confessor, and still another eigh
teen livres to her granddaughter, the daughter of
the above-named son, during her life, to be employed
in giving a dinner to the poor of the parish in which

366 Life of Mile. Le Gras.

she may live : at which dinner she will serve the poor
guests. Wishing, moreover, the said will and codi
cils to be executed, and begging M. Vincent to be,
with said son, executor of the present codicil. This
was thus made, said, and named by the said lady, Le
Gras, to said notaries ; and being re-read to her by
one of the same, the other being present, she has
pronounced it to be well understood, in the said house
where she was living, in a little room on the first story,
where she was in bed sick, on the same day and year,
and she signed thus : LOUISE DE MARILLAC.

LE GARON et GALOIS, Notaries.

GENERAL STATEMENT

OF THE ESTABLISHMENTS SERVED AND DIRECTED BY

THE DAUGHTERS OF CHARITY.

France 891

Algeria 32

Belgium ... 36

Austria 44

England 17

Scotland and Ireland 6

ItaI 7 333

Prussia and Poland 73

Portugal 4

Spain , 292

Switzerland 4

Levant 34

Isle of the Reunion 2

China 8

United States 103

Gautemala 13

Panama 3

Ecuador 7

Peru !8

Brazil 25

La Plata I3

Chili I9

RECAPITULATION.

France and Algeria 923 houses

Foreign.... 1054

Total 1977 houses

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Beautiful presents for Schools. t E. P. WAUUAMS, Bithop of Ogdensburg.

Good and useful Books. THOMAS S. PRESTON, V.G.

They have my fullest approbation. G. RAYMOND, V.G., New Orlean .

They please me very much. H. HUDON, S.J., Pres. H. Francis Xavier s College, N. Y.
Admirable books, so cheaply gotten up and so prettily bound that we wonder much
you can pay expenses on them. If Catholic literature was reduced in price and made &s
presentable as these books, it would be a boon.

THE SISTERS OP MERCY, Eureka, California.

You merit the approval and gratitude of the Catholic Schools at large, for the publica
tion of The Premium Book Library" Series. SISTERS OF NOTRE DAME, Philadelphia.

BENZI&ER BROTHERS, Hew Tort, Cincinnati, ani St, Lonis.

MAILED FREE, TO ANY ADDRESS, ON RECEIPT OF PRICE.

NEW PRACTICAL MEDITATIONS

FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR

ON THE

Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

CHIEFLY INTENDED

FOR THE USE OF RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES.

BY THE

REV. FATHER BRUNO VERCRUYSSE, S. J.
THE ONLY COMPLETE ENGLISH TRANSLATION.

PUBLISHED WITH THE APPBOBATION AND TINDER THE DIRECTION OP THE AUTHOR.

WITH THE APPROBATION OF THEIR EMINENCES THE CARDINAL ARCHBISHO
OP NEW YORK AND THE CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF MECHLIN.

2 vols., 1244 pages. Extra cloth, beveled boards, red edges, $5.

A work I have long desired. t JOHN M. HENNI, Archbishop of Mihcaukee.

The best book of its kind in the English language, with which I am acquainted.

t A. M. A. BLANCHET, Bp. of Nesqnaly.

Although designed for religious communities, I would recommend its attentive perusal
to all those who aspire to Christian perfection. t ANTOINE, Bp. of Sherbrooke.

They are really practical Meditations, which ought to be in the hands of all persons.

t Louis, Bp. of Burlington, Vt.

I am confident that the use of them will prove highly beneficial to all who aspire to
Christian perfection.

T. CUARATJX, S. J., Superior- General of the Mission of New York and Canada.

A MEMORIAL OP A CHRISTIAN LIFE.

CONTAINING

A.11 that a Soul, newly converted to God, ought to do that it may
attain the Perfection to which it should aspire.

FROM THE SPANISH OP

The Venerable F, Lev/is de Granada,

OP THE ORDER OP ST. DOMINIC.
REVISED EDITION, WITH A PREFACE BY

ONE OF THE DOMINICAN FATHERS OF NEW YORK,

One Vol., 18mo, cloth, 420 pp., 75 cts.

COPT OP A LETTER PROM

THE PROVINCIAL OF THE DOMINICAN FATHERS.

NEW YORK, 28th February, 1874.
MESSRS. BENZIGER BROTHERS :

DEAR SIRS : We are pleased to find that you still continue the publication of that most
excellent work, "A MEMORIAL op A CHRISTIAN LIFE." The offspring of the genius and
piety of the Venerable Louis of Granada, it has lived in all languages for three centuries,
and received the approbation of the whole Christian world. Feeling that its circulation
would do an immense good, we would l>e glad if our Fathers would recom
mend It to the Faithful at our Missions.

This new translation, by one of our Friars, removes the objections made to former
editions, and is the only one of which we approve. J. A. ROTCHPOKD, O. P.

BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York, Cincinnati, & St. Louis

ZEAL IN THE

WORK OF THE MINISTRY;

OR,

THE MEANS BY WHICH EVERY PEIEST MAY EENDEE HIS
MINISTEY HONORABLE AND FRUITFUL,

ADDRESSED TO ALL CLERGYMEN GENERALLY; BUT MORE

ESPECIALLY TO THOSE CHARGED WITH

THE CARE OF A PARISH.

BY L ABBfi DUBOIS,

Chanoine ffoneraire de Coutances, A ncien Missionaire, Cur/, andSupenew
(fun Grand Seminairc.

Translated from the Fifth French Edition.

Crown 8vo, cloth, $2.50

From the Host Ret. JAMES GIBBONS, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore :

u I am glad to find that you have published an English translation of the work of
the Abb6 Dubois on 4 ZEAL IN THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY. It is a book well calcu
lated to stimulate the piety of the clergy, and to impress them with re
newed ardor in the fulfilment of their arduous labors.

li The excellence of this manual may be inferred from its popularity and diffusion
in the original French. I would be delighted to know that every priest exercising the
ministry in this diocese would be supplied with a copy."

From the Right Rev. THOMAS L. GEAGE, D.D., Bishop of St. Paul :

41 1 thank you from my heart for having reprinted that most inestimable book
for priests, l ZEAL IN THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY. Nothing will gratify me more
than to have this book in the hands of every priest in my diocese.

From the Right Rev. T. MULLEN, D.D., Bishop of Erie :

" l ZEAL IN THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY, though addressed by its distinguished
author, the Abbe Dubois, to the clergy of France, is a book from which the ministers
of our holy religion at all times and in all countries may derive much useful and
solid instruction not to be found in any other work."

From the Right Rev. S. V. RYAN, D.D., Bishop of Buffalo :

* I am more than pleased that you have brought out the Abb6 Dubois excellent
work on l ZEAL IN THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY, with which, in the original, I
have been long familiar. I will be happy to recommend it to our clergy, to whom the
perusal of it cannot fail to be most useful."

From the Right Rev. C. H. BORGESS, D.B., Bishop of Detroit :

u We have taken great pleasure in the perusal of the excellent work, ZEAL
IN THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY, by L Abbe Dubois, and feel confident that, by
having published the work, you will not only merit the full approbation, but tht
sincere gratitude of the clergy."

From the Right Rev. P. T. O REILLY, D.D., Bishop of Springfield :

" You sent me some time ago a book which should be in the hands of every
Priest in the country. I mean ZEAL IN THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY. It is an
excellent work, replete with solid instructions, and I thank you for it."

BENZIGER BROTHERS, NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, dt ST, LOUIS.

PICTORIAL

LIVES OF THE SAINTS,

WITH REFLECTIONS, FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR.

WITH A PREFACE BY

A,-ER-TD Ix/CoG-ITSTlSriNr, XD.TD.,
PASTOR OF ST. STEPHEN S CHURCH, NEW YORK.

ST. BR1DG1D RECEIVING THE VEIL.

The present volume offers in a compendious form the lives of many eminent servants of
God, forming, as it were, A BOOK OF DAILY MEDITATIONS. It is embellished with a
beautiful Chromo Frontispiece of I he Holy Family and a full-page picture of St. Patrick
the glorious Apostle of Ireland ? made, expressly for this work, from a fin steel engrfu-ing.
In addition the book contains an illustration for almost every life given, altogether NEARLY
FOUR HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS, making it the most attractive book now published.
To crown all, there is a Preface by the learned and eminent Dr. Edward McGlynn^ in which
is set forth in burning words the great benefit to be gained by reading and meditating on the
Lives of the Saints, those shining stars of heaven, the glory of the Church, who shed an ever-
luminous ray o er the narrow and stormy path which all must travel in order to reach the
haven of eternal bliss.

The work has been greatly admired by OUR HOLY FATHKR, POPE LEO XIII., who
sent his special blessing to the publishers, by the hands of Very Rev. Dr. Kostlot, Rector
of the American College, Rome. It is approved by His Eminence the Cardinal, Arch
bishop of New York ; The Most Reverend Archbishops of Milwaukee, Oregon, Phila
delphia ; The Right Reverend Bishops of Arizona, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Co
lumbus, Detroit, Erie, Fort Wayne, Galveston, Grass Valley, Greenbay, Leaven-
worth, Louisville, Marquette, Nesqualy, Ogdensburg, Peoria, Providence, Savan
nah, Scranton, St. Cloud, St. Paul, Wheeling.

The work is issued in the best style on highly calendered tinted paper, and the side is
beautified by a symbolical design of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, the Queen of All
Saints. Sold only by Subscription.

Elegantly bound in extra cloth, full gilt side, $3.50; elegantly bound in extra cloth, full
gilt side, gilt edges, $4 ; elegantly bound in French morocco, full gilt side, gilt edges, $5.50,

Printers to the Holy Apostolic See^

NEW YORK, 811 BROAD W AY.

CINCINNATI. 143 Main Street 8nr. Loots, 206 South 4th St.

SHORT STORIES

O1ST CHK,ISTI^u3Sr 3DOOT 1

A COLLECTION OF EXAMPLES,

Illustrating the Catechism.

Translated from the French

BY Miss MARY McMAHON.

12mo,, Cloth. With 6 Full-page Illustrations, $1.00.

The usefulness of example in religious teaching is uni
versally admitted, but as no little research is necessary to find
suitable examples, this "book attempts to supply them. The
ideas are suited to the comprehension of the young minds for
whom the work is especially intended, and under the intel
ligent direction of pious instructors, will prove not only a
worthy complement to Deharbe s Catechism whose
order and arrangement it follows but will add a constant
and varied interest to the religious instruction.

Children are always eager for stories, and the Catechism
class will never seem long or tedious to the pupils, if, from
time to time, one of them is selected to read or to relate some
of the historical facts to be found in this collection. Of the
choice of examples, no justification is necessary, for it is
certain that the pupil who goes through the book thoroughly
and attentively, will acquire a knowledge of not only the
principal personages of the Old and New Testament, but also
of those of the Church.

The original work, which is

Approved by a Cardinal, three Archbishops,
and many Bishops

of France, has passed through several editions, and the
publishers are confident that this translation rftis only to be
come known to meet with like success.

BENZIGER BROTHERS, NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, and ST, LOUIS,

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